 
# The Sword of Sighs

### By Greg James
Copyright © Greg James 2013

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. 

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. 

Any reproduction, resale or unauthorised use of the material or artwork herein is therefore prohibited. 

Disclaimer: The persons, places and events depicted in this work are fictional and any resemblance to those living or dead is unintentional. 

#  Dedication

_~_ _For Lora ~ a living flame ~_

#  Prologue

The night winds droned low and bitter around the snow-crusted flanks of the lone-standing mountain known as Fellhorn.  Its forbidding heights were only slightly smoothed by the ice that had settled over its treacherous, beetling crags.  Clouds clung, cancerous, to the bone-white breast of the moon, darkening the storm-wracked landscape below. 

Sarah Bean ran through the snow, dragging herself along the narrow path ahead.  Her teeth chattered and her head ached as the insistent, howling blizzard battered her skull and stung her freezing flesh.  Flicking long dark strands of hair from her eyes, she tried to see more clearly where she was going—to no avail.  Streaming currents of snow and high-altitude fog swam in, obscuring everything before her.  And she well knew what was behind her.  The sonorous notes of hunting horns momentarily cut through Nature's deafening roar. 

The Fallen-born were coming. 

Forcing her numb feet to run on through the storm, she stumbled and slowed, although her screaming brain demanded speed and dexterity.  When she was not grasping at outcrops to keep her balance, she held her arms tight across her chest, trying vainly to trap warmth within.  She had never felt such cold before, nor had she been in such a place, not in her life, and never in her dreams.  She knew the old saying that a pinch should be enough to awaken someone from a bad dream.  But this was no bad dream.  This was her Path, and she had to follow it to the end, whatever that might be.  So Ossen the Wayfarer had said.  But Ossen had been wrong about other things—maybe he was wrong about this too?  Maybe she would die here, on the mountain, torn apart by the Fallen One's Five Shadows. 

The storm's white winds bit harshly at her ears as she listened.  They were coming closer.  She could hear them over the blasts that came again and again from their horns.  Could hear the beating hooves of their corpse-horses, the scraping iron welded onto their skulls and bones.  Her heart hurt in her chest as it tried to pump harder, scouring her veins and arteries with stabs of adrenaline.  She did not want to look into the eyes of a Fallen-born again.  She knew now why Ossen called them Devil-eyes. 

The air she breathed was thinning out, but so too was it finally clearing about her, showing her the way.  She could see something rising out of the rocks above.  A change in the nature of her surroundings.  Then, as if a god were catching its breath, the night cleared, the moon shone and it was there before her—the top of the mountain.  And glittering in the wan light was the object of power that she sought. 

The Sword of Sighs. 

Atop the Fellhorn, it was driven into the snow-crusted summit, where it shone like a fallen star.  She went to it.  She could hear it: low whispers and light sighs, in languages she could not understand, emanated from the shimmering blade. 

Further shouts and calls came from the belts of fog below.  Her insides felt cold, fluid, and empty as she realised how alien the realm of Seythe truly was.  How far away she was from home.  Then there was a series of howls, strident, hungry, and close at hand.  The tone of their hunting horns rang, victorious and mocking, in her ears.  Again came the pounding of hooves, the scraping of iron, the sound of swords being unslung.  Sarah no longer looked upon the strange sword before her with fear.  It was her only means of survival now.  She grasped its hilt with both hands, meaning to draw it out so she could turn and face the gathering darkness. 

The howls of the Fallen-born and their hunting horns stilled into silence. 

Sarah braced herself against the ground, shaking violently as she tried to pull the sword free from the mountain.  It would not move.  It might as well have been a part of the stone.  She rubbed her hands together and tried again.  She could still feel the bite of the storm's cold in her bones.  Death was behind her, coming closer; it had dismounted and drawn five swords from black scabbards. 

Tears streamed from her eyes. 

She heard the heavy sound of armoured feet crunching through snow and ice.  With every muscle screaming, Sarah hauled at the Sword of Sighs one last time. 

It would not give.  It would not move.  It would not come free.  The ghostly voices swimming out from it seemed to mock her. 

Shoulders sagging, senses and sight failing, she turned to face them without it. 

The Fallen-born, sons of shadow and darkness.  Their bodies were wasted away, bones and bare muscle showing where greying skin had torn.  Their eyes were open red sockets and a yellowish slurry ran from between sharpened teeth diabolically fused with a black iron, which itself smoked and reeked and steamed.  That same iron was also one with the rest of their bodies.  In their creaking, skeletal hands, they wielded black swords, the blades of which resembled polished ebony glass.  One let out its familiar feral howl, and it was joined by another, another, and then another and another, until the chorus they made was an ear-splitting screech.  It paralysed her as well as any spell or hypnosis might.  The Fallen-born encircled Sarah and closed in on her.  She tried to dodge or feint, to get away, but there was no way out.  Each of the Fallen-born raised its sword high and then swept the blade down in a screaming arc.  The voice of the storm shook the great mountain to its roots. 

Sarah licked her dry lips. 

Her head fell at the feet of the Fallen-born.  And, as darkness hurried in, she heard the storm itself speak: _"I take your life again, O Flame.  I win."_ 

And then there was only laughter and the storm's black thunder. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter One

Sarah awoke on the school bus, stifling a scream in her throat.  Gasping, blinking, looking around, she saw that everything was all right.  Normal.  Blue sky showed over the palm trees and pastel-painted one-storey houses that ran alongside Larrimore Road. _ Just a dream, a nightmare, nothing to worry about_ , she thought.  She checked her phone, the thumb-smudged touchscreen catching the late afternoon sun, and saw that she had only been asleep for a little while. 

"Eternity in an hour..." she whispered to herself before gazing back out of the bus window. 

Outside was Okeechobee, Florida, her home, and behind her was Pahokee High School.  It was okay, as schools went, and the city of Pahokee was okay as a place to live.  It was somewhere between rural and small town, without quite being either.  Okeechobee County was named after its lake, the Big O. Okeechobee being _Hitchiti_ for Big Water.  Okeechobee did what it said on the tin. _ Kind of like the people who came here,_ she thought.  You got what you saw, whether it was what you were looking for or not.  Looking back, she saw that the bus was kind of empty, at least more than she would have expected.  Then she saw who was there, at the back of the bus. 

Trianna, Geneva, and a few of their followers.  They didn't like her.  They didn't like having a nerd as a cheerleader for the Blue Devils.  Sarah remembered their words when they had seen the books and the Kindle in her locker after the last game. 

"What are you reading for?"  Trianna asked. 

Sarah looked at her, eyebrows raised. 

Geneva said, "Yeah, why would you want to be a reader?" 

Sarah shrugged, not sure what to say. " I enjoy it.  It's fun." 

Trianna looked at Geneva and then back at Sarah. " Reading's nerdy.  Like _super_ nerdy." 

"Sarah, in our squad we don't _do_ nerdy." 

Sarah felt her mouth forming into a tight line, and she turned away from the two girls.  Trianna and Geneva were known as The Twins; even though they were not related, most would think they were, the only difference between them being Trianna's brunette curls and Geneva's blonde mane.  Their hard sapphire eyes and cute rosebud mouths were identical, as were their spoilt, haughty demeanours.  Their families were neighbours, and the girls had grown up together.  They'd not been apart for more than a day.  They did everything as one—cheerleading, bunking off, and bullying.  The latter being why Sarah knew she was in trouble when they picked her out as a nerd.  And now, she could see she was alone on the bus with them.  Whichever stop she got off at, she knew they would too, and there was no point staying on the bus because they would stay and wait until she was miles out of her way.  She had heard the stories about what Trianna and Geneva liked to do to their victims. 

At the next stop, Sarah got off. 

Keeping up a steady trot, she made sure she stayed out of shadows on the sidewalk and kept herself in the light.  As soon as she tried anything, they would be on her.  She could hear them coming along behind her, keeping enough distance to let her know they were there, without looking like they meant trouble to passers-by.  Close enough that she could not easily get away and lose them.  They walked like this for half an hour, Sarah with her heart racing and mind swirling, trying to think clearly.  She had hoped they might slack off, get bored and go, but their pace never faltered for a minute. 

_They really want to get me,_ she thought. _ I need to call someone.  Mom or Kiley.  Get them to come get me._ 

She took out her phone and looked around, realising she didn't know where she was.  This was not her neighbourhood, and she had wandered off the school bus route while concentrating on giving them the slip, losing herself as much as she had planned to lose them in the grid of local streets.  Family homes flanked by palm trees, trucks, and cars were everywhere, as were the lengthening shadows of approaching evening.  She slowed as she looked at her phone.  A rush of footsteps.  She tried to stuff the phone away.  Too late. 

Trianna's manicured fingers snatched it and pocketed it. " I don't think so, nerd.  We want to have some fun with you.  Y'know, fun?  Like when you're reading." 

Sarah stiffened as the girl's other hand dug into her upper arm.  Geneva was on the other side of her, also exerting a firm grip—enough to stop her running but not hard enough to bruise.  The other three girls closed in behind her, just to make sure Sarah knew retreat was hopeless. 

"Now, let's take her ... down there." 

At the end of the street stood a grove of trees, quiet, dark and deserted at this time of the day.  Trianna and Geneva dragged Sarah into the cooling shade and their followers came after.  Standing in the way of the sun's rays, they made the grove seem somehow darker.  Sarah didn't know their names, but they had the same hard, sculpted looks as her two captors.  Looking back to the street and the houses she was separated from by the boles of palm trees, Sarah thought again about shouting or screaming for help.  But a tightening of the twin grips on her arms, as the girls felt her tensing, made her bite her tongue. 

_It won't be too bad,_ she told herself. _ They've never really hurt anyone.  I've not seen any cuts or bruises or broken bones.  Just the videos and pictures sent around online, the ones that've ended up on phones, tablets, and Kindles all over the school._ 

The hands gripping her arms were gone.  The Twins had stopped, leaving Sarah to trip forward over her own feet and stumble onto her knees in the dirt.  She winced at the grazes made by the fall.  Turning herself over, she tried to get up but found herself suddenly swarmed upon by the unspeaking followers, all raven-haired and dark-eyed. _ Like crows over a battlefield,_ she thought. _ Or an execution_. 

Trianna and Geneva wore matching smiles on their immaculate faces as they looked to each other and then to their followers, nodding, not making eye contact with Sarah.  One girl was behind Sarah, holding her arms tightly at her back.  The other two held a leg each. 

"Do it," they said as one. 

The girls pinning her legs unfastened and threw away her shoes before stripping off her socks.  Sarah writhed and tried to kick out.  She watched her bare toes squirm and clench as she tried to force them to the ground and gain some traction in the sun-baked earth.  She saw Trianna's eyes shining a little. 

"Let's tickle the baby.  I get the feet, okay?" 

Geneva smiled. " Sure.  Until she pees her pants.  My turn with the sides and underarms." 

The Twins approached, casting long shadows over Sarah, and then they were upon her.  Their fingers dug into her, merciless in their scraping and scratching.  Sarah's eyes were soon stinging with tears as she kicked, bucked, laughed and screamed out loud.  She felt a strange burning sensation rush through her.  It felt like she was on fire. 

" _... bound in the flesh, O Flame ... but thy Fire, 'tis rising ..."_

Sarah felt herself flush red and fight harder. 

Geneva leaned in and whispered into her ear, "We're going to tickle you until you wet yourself.  You're going to have to walk home like that.  Then we're going to take pictures of you.  And everyone at school will see them. _ Everyone."_ 

Sarah spat into Geneva's face.  The scene of torture froze as Geneva sat up slowly, her fingers raking away the spit.  Her eyes were cold, black, and hating.  Sarah felt the hands that held her loosen.  She kicked out and her heel caught Trianna in the face, right on her pert nose.  Sarah's stomach clenched at the feeling of cartilage collapsing and the slick spread of blood across the bottom of her foot. 

" _You little bitch!"_ 

Trianna flung herself at Sarah, fingernails out to slash at her face and eyes.  The tickling was over.  The livid eyes of the brown-haired twin promised that blood, not urine, would soak the ground now.  Sarah could hear Geneva shouting, hands were on Trianna, trying to pull her away.  And there was the burning again, flooding through her from her toes up to her head: hot, fierce, searing and sweltering. 

" _O Flame Eternal ... O Fire rising ..."_

Motes of incendiary gold circled around her momentarily, and then they were gone.  Sarah could smell ashes and blood in her nostrils.  She opened her eyes and saw the other girls staring at her, wide-eyed.  Then the moment was broken, and their faces were fierce again, especially Trianna's. 

Sarah fled through the trees, but they came after her. 

What just happened to me? 

She didn't know, but it had saved her—for the moment.  She dodged and ran through the shade of the palm trees, gaining ground on the shouting, squabbling girls behind her.  She knew Trianna was in the lead; she could hear her voice over the others.  She could hear the shrill notes of pain in it.  Sarah had fought back and wounded the girl's face, and through it, her pride.  She would show her no mercy, and the other girls knew that.  They knew it, and they were afraid.  But Sarah knew something also: where she was going, where she was leading them.  To a special, sacred place where she would be safe. 

She hoped. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah stood in the fairground and remembered being there as a child, with Dad, clutching at his fingers, being led by the big, broad man with a Santa Claus beard, through the milling mass of people.  The summer night air was cotton-candy sweet, tasting also of butter and popcorn salt.  Faces on heads and faces on balloons were bobbing all around her, all smiling, red-cheeked and glossy-eyed.  Candy-coloured lights shone from the fizzing bulbs that studded the stalls, and the carapaces of the rides were decorated with rainbows and lightning bolts.  The dodgem cars were gaudy beetles, whirring, burring, thumping and bumping.  The waltzer was a hurricane of happy screams and thrilling cries.  Through the stalls and rides, they came to one of her favourite places—the rifle range. 

"Can I, Dad?  Can I shoot some bad guys?  Can I?  Pleeease." 

Sarah tugged on her father's fingers, not hard but insistent.  A smudged, dirty hand ruffled her scruffy blonde bowl-cut hair. 

"Sure thing.  It's only a quarter.  You can shoot lots of bad guys, Moon-pie," he said as he pushed the money into her hand. 

Moon-pie was his pet name for her; one he never said when Mom or Kiley were around.  Sarah smiled the toothy smile of innocence and pure childhood and then she ran to the range, dodging through the striding legs of grown-ups and teenagers.  She remembered making a face as she caught sight of a couple sinking into their first faltering French kiss. 

Ewwww! 

She pushed a quarter into the thin, mottled hand of the rifle-range man.  A balding Good Ole Boy wearing a pair of chipped aviator shades and a quilted orange jacket.  A chain and tags blinked silver into Sarah's eyes. 

"I wanna shoot bad guys," she said. 

"'Course, you do.  Don't we all?  Go right ahead, kid.  Hit 'em right between the eyes." 

Grinning and giddy, Sarah picked up the small air rifle.  It was tacky with sugared thumbprints and syrup stains.  She rested the butt against his shoulder and peered down the barrel.  Taking aim, she made her finger into a hook over the trigger.  With a creaky twang, the first bad guy popped up and Sarah pulled the trigger. 

Bang- _dead!_ 

The sneering face dropped out of sight. 

Twang! 

Another bad guy. 

Bang- _dead!_ 

"Another one down.  Nice work," said the rifle-range man. " One more and you get a prize." 

In the back of her throat, Sarah could taste the popcorn she had eaten earlier. 

"Go on, kid," he said. " Get some more.  Up the body count.  S'important.  S'a numbers game.  Shooting bad guys." 

"Yes, sir," Sarah heard herself say. 

Twang! 

Bad guy number three. 

Bang _-dead!_ 

"Have I won?" 

Dad was at her side, firm hand steady on her shoulder. 

"You sure have, kid.  Here's a teddy bear for you to take home." 

He gave her the bear.  It was plain and brown with one of its eyes coming loose and the stitching starting to show.  She loved it all the same, hugging it tight all the way home, as tight as her Dad hugged her when he put her to bed at night. 

_That was then, though,_ thought Sarah. _ This is now._ 

The fairground was all wrong now, all changed by the passing of time.  She was surrounded by dead things that had once been stalls and fairground rides.  The vivid paint of the past had flaked away, and the bulbs adorning their exteriors had been shattered.  There was the helter-skelter, its colours faded away, crawling with mites and woodworm.  The structure wailed as wind blew through the holes in it.  There was the big wheel, creaking, rusty and old.  The waltzer was an empty shell, and the whirring, burring dodgem cars were all silent and still.  The horses on the merry-go-round seemed to be staring at her.  She didn't like it sometimes, but this was her special place.  Good memories came from it, even if the place itself had gone bad.  She came here when she felt sad and wanted to remember. 

Remember Dad...

Sarah heard shouts from the trees and ran further into the fairground.  There would be time enough for day-dreaming later.  She knew Mom would have a fit if she ever knew Sarah was walking around these old rides all by herself.  It was creepy.  Especially when it got dark.  And she hoped that would scare Trianna, Geneva and the others away.  Fear of ghosts, or fear of getting their perfect faces and clothes dirty. 

_Where to hide_ , she thought, _if they come in here for me?  Where's the perfect place for me to hide?_ 

After a moment or two, she remembered, smiled, and ran to the perfect place. 

The Hall of Mirrors. 

The shadowed surfaces within twisted and turned in on themselves, creating silvered portals to distorted worlds that were like and unlike this one.  A painted sign reading _Danger!_  crunched under her feet as she ran in.  Her five pursuers were not far behind. 

_Five_ , she thought, _just like in the dream._ 

Inside, Sarah ran on until she could no longer hear their shouts and cries.  Tired and short of breath, she stopped, looked around, and found that she wasn't sure which way she had come in.  She had passed so many mirrors.  Turning back, all she saw was shadows, some light and swaying versions of herself.  She walked around and around, trailing her fingertips along the dust-streaked glass.  It did not break at any point.  She did not touch on empty air.  The way back was closed. 

"What's going on?"  she asked. 

Nothing answered. 

It was then that she heard their voices again, coming towards her, closer and closer.  She could see the way ahead, so she thought, and so Sarah went on.  There was a light and she chased it—a slight flame reflected in the dark glass, dancing away each time she drew close.  Passing more and more mirrors, she glimpsed herself seeming to sway, swirl, shrink, and swell along the way.  Beyond the reflections, Sarah thought she saw places: strange cities with soaring spires, rolling plains peopled by shaggy stampeding beasts she could not name, great airborne castles passing through mountainous clouds, and gigantic trees reaching up into scintillating skies of amethyst, turquoise, and emerald.  Each time, she stopped to push vainly at the glass walls, trying to see if there was a way to retreat back out into the light of day.  But then the voices came through again.  Trianna.  Geneva.  And the others.  Haunting her and hunting her through the dark.  Sarah went on and on until her feet hurt, until she wanted to cry.  Until she became too tired to care anymore.  Then she lay down in growing roots of shadow to sleep. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Two

Sarah dreamed she was at the graveyard where she used to go with Dad.  She had been the spotter.  Before Flag Day, she would run around the graveyard, checking whether there were markers on the graves for all of the veterans.  Dad and his friends would then put bronze shield markers on the graves that were bare.  Some read _Grand Army of the Republic_.  Others, _Spanish American Expeditionary Force_. _ Filipino Expeditionary Force,_ too.  Every war America had fought in, they commemorated. 

Sarah was carrying one of the markers through the graveyard.  It was a grey day and darker clouds were hurrying in. 

"Dad?" 

No answer.  No one in sight. 

"Mick?  Al?  Boots?" 

No-one hollered back.  The wind was picking up.  The flags at each of the graves were snapping viciously.  Sarah felt the marker in her hands growing heavier.  Shuffling around, describing a grubby circle in the hissing wet grass, she bent her back and pulled hard at it.  The base of the marker went along, inch by inch, gouging a deep divot, spraying up soil.  Sarah's spine was aching.  She strained as she hefted the marker along in little jumps. 

Yank- _thump_ -yank- _thump_ -yank- _thump_

Then she couldn't move it, not one inch more.  Her fingers were red and sore.  Sarah slumped to the ground.  Dad and his friends would be along soon.  They wouldn't forget about her. 

Wouldn't leave her behind. 

Then, she heard them.  Voices.  They were coming from under her feet.  She could hear sounds too.  Scraping, scratching, scrabbling sounds.  Fingers scratching away at wood.  The wood of coffins. 

" _You got a light on you, kid?"_ 

" _Dying for a smoke down here, we are."_ 

" _Those goddamn choppers're worth more'n me."_ 

" _Where you goin'?  Why?"_ 

" _Come back, Moon-pie, don't leave y'r ole Dad down 'ere."_ 

On her feet, screaming, Sarah ran. 

She ran and ran.  She ran down through the rows of graves and markers.  She ran to her left.  And then to her right.  Her eyes searched the ever-fleeing horizon for the gate, for her Dad come to rescue her from the voices.  But she saw nothing but more graves and more markers.  The cemetery was a necropolis, the dead lying in state for as far as she could see.  All of them were chattering.  Some barking, baying, and yelling.  Banging their withered fists on the undersides of their coffin lids. 

" _Wasn't my time.  Not my time, dammit."_ 

" _C'mere.  Come closer.  Lemme out.  I'll show you a secret."_ 

" _Gonna hurt you real bad 'f you don' dig me out, kid.  Cut you up into little bits."_ 

All of the voices, all the same.  Sarah put her fingers in her ears.  She closed her eyes and opened her lungs, screaming and screaming, louder and louder.  Desperate not to hear this.  Needing this not to be. 

All the dead.  All the Dads.  All of them _her_ Dad. 

She fell to her knees in the grass, feeling it dig in like wet needles, everything piercing her.  She could hear it, see it, feel it—all of it.  Never going to go away.  Never going to stop.  Sarah opened her eyes.  Looking down, she saw what had not been there before. 

A grave, unmarked.  The name on it she knew.  Her name. 

Then there was a sound she knew.  She closed her eyes. 

Bang- _Dead!_ 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Three

Blinking, wiping away the nightmare she'd had so many times, Sarah sat up, looked around and shivered.  The ground underneath her was not dry, dusty, and hard as it should be, but cold and wet.  And there were trees—gnarled, twisted things with branches that were thick with skin-like layers of moss, mould, and lichen.  It was still night, she could see that much through the few spaces in the canopy overhead.  Through these spaces came slim beams of bluish light that allowed her eyesight to adjust.  She saw the knotty undergrowth of tangling tree roots and bracken.  There was little space for grass to grow, only patches of mulch and shallow bog.  Looking down at herself, she saw that she was dirty and stained from the fight but the dirt was that of the palm tree grove and the fairground, not this place.  Shakily, Sarah got to her feet and peered into the depths of the forest.  She could see no break in the trees, only further beams of light seeping through here and there.  She sat down hard upon a great tree root and rubbed her hands and bare feet against the growing cold.  The air was damp and ripe. 

This place was very old.  Aeons old.  Ancient. 

"How did I get here?" 

Silence weighed heavily upon the forest, and Sarah knew she would get no answers sitting on a tree root in the dark.  Brushing herself down, she got to her feet, fighting the urge to cry, to shout, to scream, to run in fear through the dismal place.  Sarah walked on into the forest. 

The going was not easy, nor pleasant.  The damp and cold of the forest made her dirty clothes cling to her.  Her feet and ankles were soon soaking from squelching through mud, mulch, and puddles of bog-water.  Brambles, branches and twigs nicked her face and snagged her sleeves and pants until she was sure she looked like a scarecrow.  She followed the light that pierced the leaves, hoping that if she kept going long enough, there would be something else for her to follow.  An animal crawling out of the undergrowth, perhaps.  A night-bird taking flight.  Something to lead her to the edge of the forest and to the outside world.  There was no other way for her to find out how she had got there.  Or where, exactly, she was. 

Her stomach rumbled, and despite the dampness, her mouth was growing very dry.  But there was no clean water in this place; she would have to keep going. 

_Something has to happen soon_ , she thought. _ Something has to show me the way._ 

~ ~ ~

It was not so much a house as a hut that she came to.  It squatted low on a mossy bank of piled earth and the windows were small, grubby squares.  It was made from white wooden logs partially plastered over with grey clay.  Light streamed from the windows and smoke from the chimney.  Sarah was very tired and hungry, so she walked away from the path of moonbeams she had been following through the forest, climbed the squelching bank of earth, and knocked at the stunted door.  The door opened to reveal an old woman clad in loose Hessian clothes that had seen better days.  She was stooped at the shoulders, and her features were long, pinched, and narrow.  Pearl-like eyes peered from the many wrinkles that made up her face.  In her hands was a broom of silver birch, which she set aside as soon as she laid eyes upon Sarah.  She smiled and stood away from the threshold, spreading out one arm. 

"Please, child, do come and warm yourself by my hearth.  It is cold and wet in the forest, and you look hungry.  I have warmth, water, and food for you.  Please, child, come in.  Do come in." 

Sarah hesitated, eyeing the old woman and the way she smiled as if she were suddenly the hungry one.  Then the odour of roast meat wafted out to her, and she stepped inside.  The old woman closed the door behind her.  Sarah heard the sound of a crude bolt being driven home but didn't much care.  She saw a plain bed by a fireplace, over which a steaming pot of stew was coming to the boil, and a small table with two chairs.  There were books on the table, old and leather-bound, as well as scattered bundles of herbs and flora.  The old woman must have been doing something with the bundles when Sarah disturbed her. 

"Sit.  Sit.  Please, sit.  Welcome to my humble home, child.  Won't you tell me your name?" 

"Sarah Bean." 

"I am Yagga.  Have you heard of me?" 

Sarah shook her head, hoping she had not offended the old woman. 

Yagga shrugged. " Some in the Thirteen Worlds have, some haven't.  It doesn't matter." 

"The Thirteen Worlds?  What do you mean?" 

"The Thirteen Worlds.  Each one of which hangs above our heads, resting on the bows and branches of this place, where the roots of all Worlds grow and the Paths to and from them all lead.  This is the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  Which World did you come from?" 

This is like a dream, Sarah thought. 

"America ... Earth." 

"Earth-Earth-Earth ... ah, yes, the Twelfth World, I think, or maybe Eleventh.  Have you been to the Thirteenth?  No, no, you can't have done.  It's dark and lonely out there, and those who go to the Thirteenth never come back.  Not very nice there.  No, it's not very nice at all." 

"Do you come from ... a World?" 

"Me?  No-no-no-no.  The Wood Beneath, this is my home.  I look after the trees, care for them and tend their roots.  And now I have someone to help me, which is _wonderful!_ " 

"Help you...?  No, look, I'm sorry, you're very kind, but I need to get out of here.  Get back home.  I don't know how I got here, but I need to get back to the Twelfth ... to Earth." 

"There is no getting back." 

"But you just said there were Paths." 

"And there are, but you will not tread them because you are staying here with me."  Yagga's voice became hard. " You have crossed over my threshold, and you may not cross back out without my blessing, which I will not give.  I could do with a maid, someone to keep the place in good order, clean and tidy for me.  You will do well enough." 

"But I can't.  My Mom and sister will be worried about me." 

"Then they can worry." 

Whoever she was, Sarah thought, she must have gone mad living alone down here.  Sarah went to the door, opened it and took a step forward.  Pain surged up from her foot as it hung in mid-air, a fierce sensation of pins and needles that soon became blistering agony.  She collapsed to the floor, gasping.  Cold sweat broke out all over her body, and she hugged herself tight as the pain subsided in gradual waves. 

Yagga's shadow fell over her. " I'm sorry, dear, but I can't let you leave.  Whatever sent you here to me, sent a blessing, and I mean to keep you, whether you like it or not." 

~ ~ ~

The days and nights that passed were sad, slow things.  Yagga put Sarah to work.  She slept on a thin mattress woven from straw and reeds and was awoken each morning by Yagga rapping her across the shoulders with her walking stick. 

"Up, up, up.  Get up.  Morning is here.  Time for your chores if you want food and water today." 

Each day, the tasks were different but depressingly familiar: scrubbing out the fireplace, mopping the floor, picking bad grains from the rice and meal that Yagga brought home. _ Never meat,_ Sarah thought, _just thin rice gruel and bland porridge to subsist on, along with tepid water._ 

"There are no animals in the Wood, child.  Only the trees and a few things that fall through to us from the Worlds, just like you did to me," Yagga said with a smile. 

_Only I didn't fall_ , thought Sarah, _I was taken.  Brought here.  Somehow.  For some strange reason._ 

She cried at night, keeping as quiet as she could.  She missed Mom; her sister, Kiley; and her boxer pup, Malarkey.  She missed kisses, comfort, and loving hugs.  There was none of that here, just Yagga's crazed mumbling, guttural snoring, and that stick smacking across her shoulders every morning until she was sure she could feel bruises blossoming.  She cried at night, and when Yagga left the hut to forage, she cried again, though it was so dark outside it might as well have been night still. 

She only knew the difference between day and night because Yagga said it was so, in the beginning.  Then, one day, Sarah saw the White Rider for the first time.  She had been outside, sweeping leaves, moss, and mould away from the hut with a broom that had seen better days, _much_ better days, when she heard the thunder of hooves.  She stopped and turned in the direction of the sound.  There was a light, dim but growing steadily more brilliant with every second.  Out of the dark of the Wood it came, blazing like a small sun, and Sarah thought of being in its path.  Images of racing trains, speeding cars, and the shriek of brakes hit too late by the driver flooded her mind as the light resolved into the form of a man on horseback.  A knight in armour fashioned from the essence of fire.  No smoke or fumes rose from him, only flickering iridescent tongues that did not seem to touch the wood of the trees or to ignite it. 

"... _O Flame, Thy Fire rising ..."_

He is burning, she thought, just like I did, this knight is made of the same Fire. 

He was passing her—intent on his Path, streaming with glimmering trails of golden motes—when he turned his head to her.  She felt his unseen eyes appraising her.  A pleasant warmth passed through her as he moved on, burning then glowing, and then finally dwindling into the distance, following his Path. 

But for a moment, he had stolen a glance at her. 

Why? 

_Maybe he recognised something in me,_ she thought, as she bent back to her sweeping. _ Maybe we are the same because we burn with the same Fire._ 

~ ~ ~

The next day, when she swept the hut, Sarah found a doll in a corner. 

A small doll stitched of old sacking, wedged inside a crevice.  She set her broom down, took the doll out, and brushed it down.  It had a chipped button for an eye and traces of thread holding it together.  There were felt stumps where cloth ears had once been.  She could feel that it was stuffed with grain of some kind, probably the bad ones Yagga had her pick out until she couldn't tell white from black.  Though she was sure she could feel something sturdier in there, like a length of knotty root. _ Someone's attempt to give the doll a crude skeleton?_  she wondered. 

It wasn't much, but it was something she could call a friend. 

_It's like the bear I won at the rifle range when Dad was still alive,_ she thought. 

She hid the doll away under her mattress and went back to sweeping, but her mind was on the doll.  There was something about it. 

Had that root inside moved when she'd touched it? 

No.  It couldn't be. 

But then a great many things that she thought couldn't be now could be. 

_Thirteen Worlds,_ she thought. _ I wonder what's in them all?_ 

~ ~ ~

That night, as Yagga slept snuffling and snoring, Sarah took the doll out from under her mattress and spoke to it.  She told it about her day, about how much she missed home, Mom, and her sister, Kiley.  And Dad.  Everything that she knew was gone.  She'd lost it all somehow by running into the Hall of Mirrors.  Everything had changed then.  She cried hard while she talked to the doll, but she later fell asleep a little lighter in her heart.  Then, the next night when she took it out, the doll spoke to her. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Four

Sarah's tongue was still with shock as she heard a voice, crisp, dry, and rustling like old autumn leaves, coming from the doll. 

"Hello, Sarah." 

"Who are you?" 

"Call me Gorra." 

"Gorra ... okay ... how come you can talk?" 

"Because this is not your World, and I am not a doll.  I am Yagga's prisoner as much as you are.  She trapped me in this body a long time ago.  She took the Wood Beneath the Worlds away from me." 

"But she said she tends the trees and looks after their roots." 

"No.  She lies, always.  I am Gorra.  I am the Wood Beneath the Worlds: its heart and soul, its bole and sap.  Without me, it has grown dark and dangerous.  Yagga's touch is making it fall into decay." 

"But—"

"Do you think a woman who keeps you as her slave tells the truth, Sarah?" 

"Do you think I should believe a doll that talks?  How do I know you aren't lying to me too?  You could be as bad as she is." 

"I could, but do I talk to you in the same way as Yagga?  Do I command, starve, and beat you?  And can I harm you now, such as I am?" 

"I don't know but things are different here to home.  You might hurt me." 

"I might, but you need a friend, Sarah." 

"How do you know?" 

"Because I listen when you speak and cry at night.  I can help you if you help me.  There are Paths out of the Wood Beneath once it is made well again, and the White Rider can take you with him along such a Path.  I can ask the trees to guide him to us." 

"I've seen him.  He still seemed to be able to find his way out of here." 

"Not even Yagga can stop the White Rider, but he will not stop or pause unless the Wood is made well again." 

_That's what you think,_ thought Sarah, remembering the Rider favouring her with a glance. _ I wonder what it means that he paused for me, then?_ 

" _... the Burning Ones ... carry the Fire ... Keepers of the Flame ..."_

"Sarah?" 

She snapped out of her reverie and looked at the doll.  The Rider had paused for her, but would he stop?  Did she know how to make him stop? 

She knew Yagga would not teach her, even if there were a way. 

"Okay, Gorra.  I will help you.  What you need me to do?" 

"Feed me.  Just a little every day, not so much that she notices what you're doing.  It'll take time, but feed me enough grain and oats and I will get us out of here." 

Sarah smiled despite herself and kissed the doll on its sack-cloth cheek. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah did as she was told. 

Each day, when she was picking the bad grains and oats out, she kept a little aside, less than a thimbleful.  And when Yagga slept, she took out the doll and fed it.  It was only a very little every day, but days turned into weeks and then into months.  Life became a haze, and Sarah became so thin and weak that she barely protested when Yagga struck her across the shoulders in the morning with the stick.  But still she stole pinches of food to feed her friend.  And Gorra thanked her and stayed hidden beneath Sarah's mattress.  He became no fatter, as she might have expected, and he said no more about what he was going to do to save her. 

_Perhaps he lied,_ she thought. _ Perhaps he is like a rat, like vermin feeding on what I steal for him.  Spirit of the Wood?  That little doll?  I'm so stupid._ 

Then, one morning, Yagga awoke her with a vicious beating.  Sarah threw her arms up to defend herself against the blows raining down.  She cried out and shouted.  Eventually, Yagga relented and smiled at her. " Well done, dear.  You did well.  Stealing food from me for this long without my noticing." 

Sarah wanted to speak up, to protest, but her mouth was too dry and her tongue too weak to ask how Yagga knew. 

"Now, child, my Familiars will see to you.  I had them go through the last batch of grain, you see.  Now, I could always do with another pair of hands when I am out foraging, and yours seem to be light-fingered enough to be just what I need." 

Sarah jumped, making Yagga laugh, as three pairs of disembodied hands appeared out of the thin air, waggling their fingers and thumbs, groping and floating towards her.  Yagga looked at Sarah, amused.  There was nothing Sarah could use as a weapon.  Nothing she could hit them away with. 

"My Familiars are most adept with their fingers and with the ways of torture.  Before they take your hands from you, I think you shall entertain me with some screams." 

"Yaaa ...Gaaa ..."

The old witch froze as the syllables of her name boomed out in the hut.  Sarah felt the mattress writhing beneath her.  She scrambled off it as the ground began to shake.  Yagga's floating hands drifted away, retreating towards their mistress, who snatched up her tattered skirts and backed towards the door. 

"There's no escape for you ... not that way..."

The wood of the door erupted, running over with moss, mulch, and vines that bound it shut.  It was Yagga's turn to cry out as she pounded her gnarled fists against the door. _"_  No, no, no, no.  Let me out of here!" 

Sarah's mattress was thrown aside, and the doll was on its feet.  For a moment, it stood staring across the room at the witch.  Then its fabric split and tore.  Roots, vines, branches and leaves came surging out, spinning around and around, weaving together, taking shape and form until he stood there. 

"Gorra ... oh no..." Yagga cried. 

The lean man-creature with a visible skeleton of branches and twigs, covered with a skin of shimmering moss, had two bronze-bright acorns for eyes.  Rustling and creaking, he began to move towards Yagga. " You bound me ... Yagga ... in that doll..."

"I know.  I know.  I did, I did, and I'm sorry, so sorry, Gorra." 

"That is not enough.  You bound this child to your service ... starved and exhausted her ... as you have starved and exhausted the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  That is not ... how it is meant to be ... down here." 

"And I repent.  I repent.  I do.  I will never do it again.  Never ever ever.  Please leave me be.  Take her with you.  Send her back to her World as she wanted.  I don't want her.  Beastly horrible human, stinking up the place.  My hands, my Familiars, will do my cooking, cleaning, sweeping, and picking now.  I swear, I swear, O Gorra." 

"Too little ... too late ... O Yagga." 

With those words, he raised his hands and began a chant that, to Sarah's ears, sounded like the creaks, groans, whistles and moans of a dark, dark forest after midnight.  Yagga threw up her arms, just as Sarah had to ward off the old woman's walking stick, and opened her mouth to let out a scream. 

But no scream came. 

Instead, a torrent of crumpled autumn leaves fell from her mouth.  Yagga's eyes grew wide, wider, and still wider as a dull texture like bark spread across her face.  She tried to lower her hands but could not; they were stiff and shook as if disturbed by a harsh breeze.  Her fingers were lengthening, sprouting branches.  Sarah looked back to her face and saw how the eyes, nose, ears and mouth had become holes sunk deep into what appeared to be the bark of a hollow, dead tree.  The moss and mulch that clung to its limbs had once been Yagga's clothing.  Gorra lowered his arms.  His strange chanting stopped, and there was nothing left to hear but a slight sigh coming from the hollow tree that had been Yagga. 

"Is she ... dead?" 

"No.  She lives as I ... lived in that doll.  Our spirits remain whole, though our bodies and forms may change.  I am the growth to ... her decay.  The change ... to her rot... both are needed in the Wood ... and the Worlds above.  She has bound me before ... but for far too long this time.  I fear ... her rot has spread too far ... and too deep into the Thirteen Worlds..."

"Can't you do anything?" 

"I can, but it will take ... time.  And what is already dead cannot grow back again ... but I will do what I must to make things grow once more..."

He turned his acorn eyes on her appraisingly.  His eyebrows of knitted yellow grass rose and fell, and was that a smile curving the worn whorls that made up his lips?  Sarah could not tell. 

"Come, Sarah.  I promised you the White Rider ... and he comes by here soon ..."

Sarah followed Gorra out of the hut, pulling away from the hollow tree.  It smelled bad.  She could still see Yagga's face etched into the tree's bark, and she was sure there were spiders inside it, scuttling about in the shadows. 

Outside, the Wood seemed unchanged but the air did not seem so dank and heavy, and there was a gathering scent of fresh, dew-tipped grass.  There was less mould on the tree trunks, and the bark seemed to glisten in rich shades of brown, ochre, and amber.  She could not name the trees.  She had seen nothing like them at home, with their great spreading roots that were as knotty and tangled as their gargantuan limbs and branches, which reached up towards a sky she could not see. 

"Here he comes now ... the Burning One ..." Gorra said. 

It was as it had been before—a light shining in the distance, growing fiercer, coming closer, closer. 

"Sarah ... I have something for you.  If something happens to you ... in the Worlds ... you may call for me ... if you have the need ... with these words: _Thou foot treads soft amidst thy darkening trees, O hear my call whisper on this twilight breeze._ " 

Sarah could hear the horse's hooves beating through the undergrowth, and she squinted as the light resolved into that armoured figure of streaming fire.  The trees seemed to melt away as the White Rider burst out from amongst them.  He was streaming sunshine, and his steed seemed to breathe and pound out flames. 

"But why would I need to call on you, Gorra?  I'm going home, right?" 

"The White Rider's Path is your own ... Sarah.  You know that as ... well as I."

" _No!_  I want to go home!  I want to see Mom, Kiley, and Malarkey!" 

A hand swept around her waist.  She could see the flames fleeing along it, but could not feel them.  There was no heat from the fire; as before, it did not burn her.  She kicked out as she was lifted off the ground.  The Rider had stopped only for a moment, as Gorra said he would. 

"Gorra!  You lied to me!  You said you were my friend." 

"I did, Sarah ... and I am.  But the Worlds come first ... and I do what I must ... for them.  Remember me not with hatred ... O Flame..."

"No!" 

With those words, and a wordless cry in her throat at being lied to and betrayed, Sarah was carried away by the White Rider.  She watched Gorra disappear into the darkness cast by the trees.  She struggled against the Rider's strong, sure grip to no avail until tiredness welled up within her.  Sarah's eyelids drooped and her eyes flickered as they rode on, although she was not sure whether it was her eyes, or just dreams, that caused the flickering. 

She saw great cities of emerald and amethyst; rolling deserts that echoed with scintillating song; skies burning with impossible shades of colour; people made of shining smoke and vapour; and bottomless seas, underneath which slumbered god-like beings of darkness and wonder that were lost deep in their own dreaming. 

And Mom and Kiley, their faces drawn and sad.  They were searching for her.  And Dad, too.  He was there.  Somewhere. 

Then, after a long time that took no time at all, the flickering came to an end and the White Rider set her down on her feet.  Grass prickled her soles and toes and she saw that she was at the edge of a wood, one of the many that formed gateways to the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  She looked back, opening her mouth to say something; she didn't know what.  But the White Rider was already gone.  She closed her eyes and listened to the hooves retreating and heard the words of Gorra come again. 

Thou foot treads soft amidst thy darkening trees, O hear my call whisper on this twilight breeze...

Then Sarah took slow, unsure steps ahead.  Was this home, as she had hoped?  Or somewhere else?  She didn't know, but Gorra knew, and he had asked her not to hate him. 

Somewhere else then. 

"I wonder where I am?" 

She walked out into a green valley where the sky was a clear, bright blue, and a crisp spring wind was blowing.  The sun was low on the eastern horizon. 

_Early morning in a new world_ , she thought. 

Sarah walked out into the valley of Norn on the Seventh World, which she would come to know as Seythe. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Five

Old men often speak of infinity and eternity, even though they know nothing at all of these things.  Infinity can be found in a few seconds, and eternity in an hour.  And when one is locked away from light, love, and laughter for even a short time, one knows time only as a thing of weight and pain.  Days are as desolation, and nights pass as haunted hells. 

Jedda had been sealed away for an entire year of her short life.  She was barely past her eighteenth winter.  In this time, she had known the lashes of the inquisitor's tongue, and when his words failed, they had put her to the rack.  She knew, as well as any citizen of the Three Kingdoms, that men were put to torture but women were not.  Such an act was as deep and dark a blasphemy as those she was accused of being party to.  It was winter outside the dungeon walls.  She could feel it in the coolness of the stone and in her aching bones.  Months ago they had tried to tear confession from her, but still the pain lingered on.  Some days, when it was bad, she limped and hobbled, as she remembered her grey-skinned mother doing before she had passed away. 

Jedda's small cell was illuminated only by a single night lantern set in an aperture high in the far wall, too high for her to reach.  She had tried to climb the walls of the cell, but her fingers shook and her toes trembled too much for her to keep a sure purchase. 

Jedda rose in the mornings and dressed herself with the same slow, sullen air that had hung over her time in prison.  Even with the privileges accorded to her as heir to the throne of Highmount, an atmosphere seemed to cling to the air she breathed, the food she ate, the water she drank, and even the books she was allowed to read.  That atmosphere stole away flavour, nourishment, and simple joy.  She knew that every moment she was alive was borrowed time that Ianna would see she paid for. 

The iron door to her cell clanked and clattered as the shutter over the opening at its base was raised.  A tray was pushed in and the shutter closed once more.  Jedda picked up the tray and took it to the table, where she picked at the bread, sliced peach, and dried strips of meat.  The milk she sipped as she stared into space, seeing not the wall, nor the corridors and crypts beyond it, but the throne room of Highmount above, where her sickly sister, Venna, wheezed, coughed and spluttered her way through audiences and ceremonies.  Ianna—an emerald-lipped shadow with a powdered face—would be at Venna's side, holding the child's frail hand, her lips parting only to bark orders at those before them.  Rumours had come to Jedda, from the serving wenches, that when Ianna was displeased with Venna's performance in court, she had the frail child carried to their shared bedchamber.  There, Venna was laid facedown and her useless but still sensitive legs and bare behind were brutally switched.  The serving wenches trembled when they told Jedda, knowing they were committing treason by saying such things to the traitor-child of the dead King Ferra. 

"But it's not right, your Highness," they said. " Venna sits on the throne, not Ianna.  Ianna shouldn't dare raise a hand to her, and it's worse with her being so poorly.  Some say she won't live out the year, what with the way Ianna treats her and things the way they are in the Grasslands these days.  Thieves and bandits'll be at the city gates come this Wintertide." 

Jedda stopped them there each time. " Venna will live to see out the year or Ianna's head will roll in the city gutters as a plaything for penniless snipes.  I will see to it." 

The wenches would always stop and stare at her as if she were mad when she said such things.  Sealed away, deep in the palace dungeons with two of the Queen's Guard at the door day and night, how on earth did she think she could escape? 

"I'll find a way," she told them, and often told herself when she was alone at night and near to tears. " I'll find a way.  Venna, be strong.  I'll find a way." 

Even if I have to call upon the Fallen One Himself, she thought. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Six

Three years went by. 

Sarah was sixteen and still dreaming, and home felt more and more like a dream every day.  She lived on the hill atop the crest of the Norn Valley with an old man who was like a grandfather to her.  He had found her wandering when she had come out of the woods.  He said she was as old as his granddaughter might have been.  Sarah never asked why he said 'might have been', and he never said why himself, but he received no visitors from family in the three years she stayed with him in his house that overlooked the grassy slopes.  Night winds gusted and blew below, at times making the little house feel as if it were a great citadel astride a tall, craggy mountain.  This had always been his home, he said.  His name was Woran Bean; his last name just like hers. 

"We are the same," he said. 

The first year was the hardest; she wandered, she walked for miles across the hills and valleys, through the woods and forests, searching for some sign, some way home.  She cried at night, as she had done in Yagga's hut, though she was warm, slept on a good bed, and was well fed by Woran.  Still, she ached for home, yearned for her family and for little Malarkey, who licked her face and fingers as his way of saying hello and good morning.  But she found nothing to show her the Path back to Okeechobee. 

If the White Rider and Gorra had ever come to this World again, she never saw them. 

Or, as she thought, they kept well away from her. 

O Flame, that's what he called me, why? 

Sometimes, she shouted the question to the trees, hoping to stir him from the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  But the only answer was a sighing breeze. 

And after three years, she no longer cried at night or ran away from Woran.  The old man was growing brittle in his advanced years, and he needed her help.  The Beans were the shepherds of the hill.  Their nearest neighbours were the Taproots and the Saltwines.  The Taproots were farmers of the slopes.  The Saltwines were brewers of ale, whose famous Hillshine liquor was sold to the taverns and way-houses thereabouts.  The three families had been neighbours in the valley for generations—so many that none could trace a time in their family trees when their children had not known and played with each other from their earliest days.  Some even married, so the bloodlines of Bean, Taproot and Saltwine crissed and crossed, back and forth, until there was a web of loyalty and trust binding them together. 

Or so it had been, until Woran and Joliah Bean, his only son, went to war.  They rode away together, but Woran Bean rode home alone.  His lined face was made even more haggard by the sights of war and the loss of his son.  Thus, the Bean family became one lonesome old man and his goats.  The Taproots and Saltwines grew distant from him, their relationship strained.  The girls who had once vied for the hand of Joliah Bean grew older and more matronly.  Spinsters of the valley had been a rare enough thing when the blood of the three families had been thick, strong, and vital.  Now that it was growing thin, and the children fewer, those who lived through the lengthening winters that swept down from the Northway Mountains grew bitter.  Solitude and shadows pressed in upon their hearts and souls. 

Sarah had little physical likeness to Woran, who claimed to be her grandfather, which did not endear her to the neighbouring families.  In the valleys, they were known for being hardy folk.  It was said that one of their number could walk for a day and a night barefoot and naked through a storm and not come down with the slightest sickness.  Their hair and eyes were dark, and their bodies were bullish and timber-strong.  Sarah was slender.  Her skin was pale and her hair was a fine blonde.  Her eyes, however, were her most extraordinary feature: glimmering amethysts threaded through with violet.  None of the Taproot or Saltwine women resembled her in the slightest, and they often cuffed their menfolk when they caught them staring at 'the Bean girl' as she had become known. 

Woran taught her how to herd goats, and on the nights when he wept as he thought on how his son was gone and how soon he would be gone too, leaving Sarah all alone, she comforted him.  Or tried to.  He had comforted her as best he could when she had cried and screamed about wanting to go home, when she had longed for a World he could barely understand.  Without him, she knew she would have come to no good end at the hands of the Taproots and Saltwines if they had caught her wandering in the valley.  But what would happen when Woran died?  She would be cast out, and they would take the land that had belonged to his family for generations.  Could she call on Gorra then with those words he had given her?  Would he come and help her?  Save her?  Take her home?  Would he? 

_No_ , she thought, _not for something like this._ 

I think. 

"I have failed my father," Woran said when he cried, "and my son, my only son.  Everything will be lost to Esiah Taproot, or Miria Saltwine.  What am I to do, Sarah?  What am I to do?" 

She held him, and hoped that something would soon happen for the better. 

~ ~ ~

The valleys rolled and rippled into horizons patterned by the shadows of passing clouds and brightened by the sun.  All except the horizon to the north, where the land became rougher and a mountain range stuck out like jagged, grey-white teeth.  These were the peaks of the Northway Mountains, and through them ran but one pass.  It was held by the city of Highmount: a fortress-city built to guard the Three Kingdoms against bandits, the mercenary armies of the Grassland Plains, and beyond that, the fell inhabitants of the Nightlands in the faraway east. 

Three walls stand where armies fall,

Three iron gates forged to cast back hell,

Three walls stand against the darkling hordes,

Three walls shall stand for Three Kingdoms proud. 

Few understood all of the old rhyme, but it was sung heartily enough and often enough in the taverns of the valleys and in the Three Kingdoms of Brindan, Atosha, and Yrsyllor.  As long as the three walls held, there would be peace.  As long as the Fallen One slept beneath the Shadowhorn Mountain in the wastes to the east, known as the Nightlands, there would be goodwill among women and men. 

But over these last few years, a creeping blight despoiled the valleys.  Grass grew, but not so rich and green as before; bare patches of soil showed everywhere, and the shoots that emerged were limp and yellow.  Few of the goats, sheep, and cows deigned to eat them, and those that did became sick and died.  The rest merely grew thin, starving until they had to be slaughtered for meat before they became nothing but skin and bones.  Storms and bitterly cold winds became more frequent, lasting into the mid-year months, when the valleys were usually temperate and mild.  Whispers were spoken in way-houses and in the Keeps of Earlmen alike.  Tales travelled of fighting beyond the valleys in the Grassland Plains, of the Kay'lo bandits becoming bolder and the robber-barons more vicious when their mercenaries waylaid merchant wagons.  Stories were spoken in hushed tones of five black riders seen on the horizon when the sun went down.  Women and children complained of hideous nightmares, and men awoke in the mornings sullen, sour-faced, and unrested.  As time went by, many watched the roads, waiting for word to come from Highmount of something happening in the east. 

~ ~ ~

It was late in the afternoon when Sarah herded the last of the goats up the slopes to the hill and into their pen.  Barra, Woran's mongrel dog—a rag-eared, rat-faced little mutt—bounded about, hemming in the bleating goats as Sarah drove them on with shouts, clashing the base of her staff against the stony ground. 

_So little grass_ , she thought, _and now the soil is thinning too, just like when the Wood Beneath the Worlds was tainted by Yagga._ 

"Save us.  I hope this blight passes on soon," she said to herself. 

Was this because of Yagga?  What did Gorra say? 

Her rot has spread too far and too deep...

Shadows were lengthening all about her, and the low sun was tingeing the sky to a deep, lustrous gold that would soon darken into night.  She increased her shouts and stamped her staff as if it were a third leg, beating it hard upon the rocks and shoving it into the behind of a dawdling goat when she had to.  The sun was already making a dark thing of her home and its hill. 

_I already think of it as home_ , she thought, _after only three years away._ 

"The grass grows fallow, storms come and go, and now the night becomes long and dark," she said to Barra as he darted past. " What will we do, eh, Barra?" 

He made no _yip_ in reply. 

Sarah realised she could no longer see him bounding about among the gathering shadows and goats, as he had been.  Brow furrowing, she turned, and then turned again, casting her eyes across the slope they had just ascended.  She saw nothing untoward but nothing of Barra either. 

"Barra? _ Barra!_ " 

Silence.  And the wind. 

" _Barra, where are you?"_ 

Sarah looked to the goats, which were gradually trotting away.  If she went looking for Barra, the goats would lose themselves in the dark.  Without them, they would have no livelihood.  No meat, milk, nor wool to sell at market in the village. 

"But Barra ..."

She whistled and called for a few minutes more.  He was an old, greying dog.  If he fell or was wounded somehow, he would die rather than recover, she knew that well enough.  A goat began to make its way past her, slow but sure.  Sarah turned and pushed the animal back up the slope towards its fellows.  Casting one last look back down the slopes and into the curves of the valley below, Sarah herded the goats home, biting back tears and the urge to run off into the dark. 

~ ~ ~

"You're quiet tonight, Sarah.  Is it about Barra?" 

She nodded as she ladled autumn stew into her mouth, her shoulders slumped and her head bowed. 

Woran Bean blew out through his whiskers and stroked his bristled chin. " He may be all right.  He's old, but he's a smart dog.  If he got himself lost, he'll lay low until the morning.  We'll find him, or he'll find us when we take the goats out." 

"I hope so," said Sarah, gazing into the distance. 

Her eyes suddenly turned on Woran, who gasped at the way they shone in the light cast by the fire. 

"Woran, do you know what's causing the blight?  Stirring up the storms and making the nights so long and cold?  I've never known a winter like this before, even back home, and we are only at the beginning of it." 

Woran stirred his stew with the wooden ladle, studying the eddies and whirlpools he made with mutton and rooty chunks of vegetable.  He sighed, sat back, and ran his hand through his thinning hair. " I've never seen the like before either, Sarah.  So no, I don't know." 

"But you've heard about something like this happening before." 

A small smile crooked Woran's lips. " You're a clever one.  Sly as Joliah used to be.  Yes, you should have been born to him as true blood-kin.  Yes, you should.  There are stories, Sarah, from long ago, of such things happening here before, but they are stories only.  The truth of a myth or a legend is in its telling, and no more than that.  If we went around believing every one of the old tales, we'd all surely go mad and be seeing Fellfolk where there are only shadows." 

"Fellfolk?" 

"Those who've given their heart and soul to the Fallen One, who sleeps and dreams all our nightmares beneath the Shadowhorn." 

A sudden darkness came over the house.  Great black wings passed by the window, engulfing the room in shadow and making the fire's flames wane weak and dim.  A hoarse crow's cry came from outside the door. 

Sarah's face paled, and so did Woran's. 

"Only a night-bird, Sarah.  Only an old crow, nothing more." 

But his voice shook as he spoke.  They ate the rest of their stew in silence, listening for further cries from the crow outside. 

None came. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Seven

Morning came. _ Autumn was slowly dying and Winter's footprints could be seen, frost-white and hard upon the ground._  Sarah and Woran opened the pen and let the goats out onto the hillside, guiding them down to the slopes below to graze.  It was a task usually made much easier by Barra dashing about, yipping and shoving at the hurrying animals. 

"I can't see Barra." 

"Call to him, Sarah.  If he's hereabouts, he'll come when you call him." 

"Barra!  Barra!  Barra?  Here, boy!"  Sarah took a few slithering steps down the hillside and peered into the shadow cast by an old stone that was set in the ground at a severe angle.  She detected movement, fur, and the sound of harsh breathing. " Woran!  It's Barra.  I think he's hurt." 

She stepped slowly toward the shadowed form, her staff in one hand.  Her fingers gripped it tighter, although she was not sure why.  Something about the sound of that breathing—it was guttural, laboured, deep, and sick. 

"Save us, don't let him be dying.  Not Barra." 

At her next step, she heard her grandfather shout, "Sarah, no!  Get away from there!" 

She turned to see him half-running, half-hobbling towards her.  She turned again.  What she had thought was Barra was emerging from the shelter of the stone.  It was mangy and near bald.  Grey-scaled flesh showed through withered clumps of black fur, and its eyes were as yellow and tainted as its teeth.  Brown ropes of drool hung from its jaws as it came out, grumbling in its throat.  Sarah could smell it. 

_Save us,_ she thought _, it stinks like something dead._ 

Then it opened its rancid maw, howled, and leapt at her, knocking the wind from her lungs.  Her staff fell from her hand.  Black blossoms and shining white light swam across Sarah's vision as she dug her hands into the fruit-soft flesh of its throat.  She could feel tendons and muscle straining, and drool spattered her as her fingers sank into the rotten meat of the thing's being.  She could hear Woran's shouts and was sure that the beast was twisting and turning as the old man beat at it with his own staff and kicked at it with his feet.  The eyes of the thing, though yellow and ripe like plague pustules, burned into her as she fought against it.  Eyes that knew her.  Eyes that spoke without using words. 

" _I see you, O Flame.  I know you, O Flame.  I will slay you this time.  Thy Fire will rise no higher.  I will make the Light go out."_ 

Sarah felt her arms weaken and the breath of the thing came closer: hot, rank and wormy.  Its teeth ached to tear into her throat and end her life. 

_What have I done?_  She wondered. _ Who does it think I am?_ 

" _You are the last.  The only one left.  All shall fall without thee, O Flame!"_ 

Then, there was another sound, familiar and welcome.  The weight of the lupine thing was torn from her, and she could breathe and see once again.  Getting up, rubbing her arms and legs, she saw what had happened.  Barra was there, struggling with the creature, his jaws locked into its throat, pulling, shaking, and tearing.  It kicked out feebly, biting and snapping at thin air, knowing it was done for.  Woran rushed to Sarah's side and embraced her. " It was intent on you; it didn't see Barra coming.  So much for that ... _Fellhound_." 

"What is it?" 

"A Fellhound, Sarah.  Something that hasn't been seen for a very long time.  Look at your hands." 

She did, and felt her stomach turn.  They were sticky and soiled with brownish muck and crumbs of dead flesh. 

"I was trying to hold it off me.  I could feel my fingers sinking into it.  How could that happen and it still be alive?" 

Woran looked at the creature on the ground, already attracting flies and worms to it. " Because it was not alive.  Nothing can truly serve the cause of the Fallen and live." 

"But it's dead now." 

"No.  Wounded.  Weakened.  Nightfall will heal its flesh and then it will come for you again."  Woran grabbed her by the shoulders. " Bring the goats back up into the pen now.  We must get back to the house.  There's not much time." 

"But it's barely midday—"

"Don't argue, Sarah.  Just do as I say." 

Woran's eyes cast about from horizon to horizon.  Sarah saw in his face that he was in fear of something—something far worse than the twitching Fellhound. 

~ ~ ~

Back at the house, after herding the goats back into their pen, Sarah found Woran poring over an old book.  Its leather covers were peeled and split, the papers in it barely held in place by ancient gum and wood-glue.  She walked closer and saw the woodcut graven onto the page in stark black lines.  Though it was an angular and rough image, she recognised it easily enough as the beast that Barra had taken down outside.  There was something else in the woodcut—a tall, dark human figure. 

"What is it?  Do you know?" 

"I've never seen one before, but I've heard tell and read enough of the old legends." 

"But you said legends were only true in their telling." 

"I did, and the Mother strike me down but I feel like my foolish words were what brought that damned thing here, although I know that's not the truth." 

"So, what is that other thing with it?"  Sarah pointed to the woodcut. 

"A Fallen-born, Sarah.  A creature of the Nightlands, bound to the service of the Fallen One in life and in death.  The Fellhounds are their hunting dogs." 

"Just what is the Fallen One, Woran?  You've never told me about this before." 

"It's just a legend, an old, old legend—and that's how it should be and should stay.  A story to frighten children, but that _thing_ outside was real.  Mother save me, I touched it.  And save us from the stink of it.  And that of its masters." 

"How could it get here?  You told me the Waste was a long way away, and there's the Northway Mountains and Highmount to defend us here." 

"I don't know how it came to be here, Sarah.  I wish I did.  But I know one thing for sure." 

"What's that?" 

"That we must go—before tonight, before it gets dark." 

"What?  But we can't.  Not tonight.  Not just like that.  What about the goats and the house?" 

"We can and we will, Sarah.  I knew this day would come the very day I took you in." 

"It came for me, is that what you're saying?  Do you know that for sure?  And you didn't tell me that either, why?" 

The old man smiled tenderly, reached out and stroked a grandfatherly finger along her jawline. " Yes.  I'm sorry, Sarah.  I knew.  I found you and I knew it was no accident.  You are not from this World.  You are from somewhere I don't know.  A place filled with things and people that sound fearful and wondrous all at the same time.  And yet, despite that, you look like her." 

"Who?" 

"A woman I loved.  She would have been my wife, but war took her from me as it did my son, Joliah.  You come from somewhere so very strange, and yet your face is the youthful mirror of one that is engraved upon my heart." 

"That's why you kept saying we are the same." 

Woran sighed and nodded. " Yes.  I knew for you to come to me must mean something would happen, and that you would be at the heart of it.  And so you are, and so we must go.  War is coming to Norn.  I don't doubt it, but I won't lose you to it.  I will not see her face die twice in my lifetime.  Sleep now.  I will take the watch.  I will burn that wretched Fellhound before it can revive, and I will see we are not surprised by its masters." 

"Woran," Sarah said, "thank you for helping, for caring for me.  I don't feel like I deserve it." 

Woran smiled. " Thank you for warming an old man's heart with the fire of fond memories these past three years.  They have been too few, and I wish that we had more time, but it is not to be.  Sleep now, Sarah.  We will make tracks before sundown." 

~ ~ ~

Sarah slept until evening. 

As she got to her feet and slipped on her leather boots, she looked out through the window and saw that it had become twilight.  The light along the horizon was casting the foothills and slopes in autumnal shades.  The dying sun was burning out, falling into the flames of an open furnace secreted just below the horizon and out of sight.  In this brilliance, she saw a mounted figure upon the crest of the far slope.  A black rider silhouetted against the last livid light of day on the horizon.  A still, silent creation of shade and shadow.  It was too far away for her to make out any details, other than a slight angularity to its form. _ Like a man armoured for war,_ she thought, remembering Woran's words. 

She shivered. 

_Sarah had seen soldiers of Norn come and go along the roadways to Highmount, but not one dressed like this.  Even from this distance, none of them had borne the slightest resemblance to what she was looking at across the valley.  And she felt, in her heart and bones, that it was looking right back at her with eyes cut from searing coals._ 

_Sarah stepped away from the window, took a breath, and then looked out again._ 

_The black rider was gone._ 

~ ~ ~

_She was alone in the house._ 

_Sarah had dressed and washed quickly before entering the parlour, expecting to find Woran there; he was nowhere to be seen.  Nights were becoming long, cold, dark things, and she swallowed hard, thinking about what that Black Rider might do once the light of day vanished and shadows were spread everywhere to cover its approach._ 

_I should not have let him see me,_ _she thought._ 

Sarah cupped her hands and blew onto the ashes of the hearth fire, smiling as she watched the embers blossom into faint tongues of flame that spat out a handful of sparks. 

_It's not yet ashes_ , she thought, _there's still some warmth to be found_. 

She stood, rubbing her shoulders against the night's cold, which was seeping through the house, and went to the stove to see if there was much stew left over.  She spooned what was there into a bowl and ate in silence.  Woran was not there and neither was Barra.  Woran often took the little mongrel with him when he had to collect something from the Taproots or Saltwines.  Barra wasn't as big as their dogs, but what he lacked in size, he more than made up for in tenacity.  His raggedy fur hid scars and marks from countless fights.  He would be okay, and so would Woran. 

But telling herself this did not stop her heart pounding.  The fire had nearly died, and the stew was almost cold.  They had been gone a long time. 

When will they be back?  Shall I go and look for them? 

_As she mulled it over, Sarah lit candles and the hurricane lantern to illuminate the house.  She fed some more wood to the fire from the stack in the corner, to encourage a glow from the windows that she hoped would somehow deter any intruder.  She could feel the lining of her gut twisting as she sat and waited and watched the door._ 

_She didn't know where she was to go once she left here, and Woran had said he meant to come with her.  If she got herself lost out there, missed Woran and Barra returning in the dark, what good would that do?_ 

_"_ _Think with the heart more than the head and you will come to the Path that leads you out of a forest dark."_ 

_It was something Woran had said to her a few times before, but it reminded her of Gorra and the White Rider._ 

_Damn it, where was he?  Because her heart was telling her to leave the house, with or without him.  To go_ _now_ _.  That twisting in her gut was screaming that something was out there.  Something wrong that should not be in this World._ 

_Rap-rap-rap-rap_

_Sarah got to her feet and tried to peer around the window frame, but the firelight had turned the world outside to shadow._ 

_Rap-rap-rap-rap_

_Woran had taken his axe with him.  A rolling pin lay on the table from when she had rolled out oat biscuits a few days ago.  She picked it up and went to the door.  She stopped._ _ What good was a rolling pin against something like that?_ 

_She moved her hand away from the bolt.  She stepped away from the door._ 

_A fierce rush of wind slammed the door open._ 

_Sarah looked up at the tall figure that stood before her.  There was nothing angular about him, and there was no sign of armour on his person.  He wore a robe that had seen better days and he carried a staff of gnarled yet polished darkwood.  As she opened the door, he removed the great cowl that covered his head and shadowed his face.  The skin there was wrinkled, care-worn, tanned by the elements and the passage of time.  His beard was long, ragged, and untrimmed, and the stark white of its hairs was contrasted by traceries of night black and stone grey.  His one eye, though, was a piercing sapphire that shone like a jewel in the reflected light of the fire within.  Where his other eye should have been there was only a pink, puckered hole._ 

_"_ _Am I addressing Sarah Bean, granddaughter to Woran Bean?"_ 

_"_ _You are," she said before she could think to hold her tongue. " Who are you?"_ 

_She made sure he could see she was armed, even if she felt slightly ridiculous holding a rolling pin as a weapon._ 

_"_ _You have seen, yourself, that the nights are growing longer and the days themselves colder.  It is wise to be wary of uninvited guests in such times."_ 

_"_ _You're right about that.  Now, who are you?"_ 

_"_ _I am Ossen, a Wayfarer.  You may have heard of me."_ 

_Sarah shook her head, holding her ground so that he could not get a foot across the threshold._ 

_"_ _Ah, then you must not be from around here?"_ 

_Sarah tried to steady her face.  She pressed her lips into a hard line in answer to the question.  Ossen's eye glittered and his next words broke her silence into pieces._ 

"Thou foot treads soft amidst thy darkening trees, O hear my call whisper on this twilight breeze.  Does that sound familiar to you, Sarah?" 

The rolling pin clattered on the floor before she even realised she had dropped it. " You ... are you Gorra?" 

_"_ _No.  You flatter me, but no.  I am not the Father of Leaves.  But I have known him and he has spoken of you, O Daughter of the Flame."_ 

_"_ _He ... he called me O Flame.  The Fellhound called me that too.  What does it mean?"_ 

_"_ _The Fellhound?  Then he_ _has_ _found you already, not that it matters.  Sarah, know that I mean you no harm, but I come with a message and a warning.  Woran Bean is hurt in the woods to the north of here.  Barra is with him and guarding him well, but the Fellhounds and those they serve will find them both soon enough."_ 

_"_ _Why did he leave without me?"_ 

_"_ _He did not.  He meant to return after buying travelling bags and two mules from an old friend—an old friend who betrayed him."_ 

_"_ _The Taproots._ _ Esiah!_ _"_ 

_"_ _Yes.  Woran slew him for his trouble, much to Esiah's surprise.  Go to him, Sarah.  Find him and save him before the Fallen-born correct Esiah's failure."_ 

_"_ _How can_ _I_ _save him alone?"_ 

_Outside, in the now shapeless darkness beyond Ossen, there came a howl.  It was a long, high, forlorn sound that echoed in ways it should not have done, not in a valley._ 

_"_ _I did not say you would be alone, Sarah.  Now go, quickly, before His Five Shadows find you._ _ Awake!_ _"_ 

~ ~ ~

#  _Chapter Eight_

It was evening in the city of Highmount and Venna and her warden, Ianna, sat at the head of a long, time-cracked table carved from greybeard oak.  A number of the thirteen men and women who sat on the council around the table were grey-bearded and grey-haired respectively.  To be on the Highmount Council was an honour, but it was an office served until the grave claimed you, which led to the Council being made up of civil servants long past their political prime.  It suited Ianna perfectly—the aged folk before her could be manipulated with a certain amount of ease.  The customary murmurings settled into a hush around the table and the heavy red curtains were drawn across the Chamber's high-vaulted windows in observance of symbolic tradition; nothing spoken or seen within the Chamber was to reach the ears and eyes of those outside. 

Ianna rose to her feet and rested her palms upon the table, a dominant pose and one enhanced by her slender but muscled six-foot frame.  Her hair was a cascade of black, framing her overly powdered white face with its thin lips and emerald eyes, which always seemed to be searching, probing, and assessing those around her.  Her long fingernails glittered with minute inset emeralds.  She cut a powerful figure beside the crowned queen. 

Venna, at eleven, was small for her age.  Her face was elfin and gentle, like her voice and manner, but her lower body was shrunken and stunted from a childhood bout of the Grey Touch—the same disease that took her mother's life.  Her legs hung wasted and useless from the chair.  Venna ran her fine fingers over them often, as if the gesture would somehow revive and strengthen the atrophied muscles hidden beneath the gold-hemmed white silk.  She was usually quiet in the Council meetings because she understood little of what was going on and cared for it even less.  She missed Jedda, and she hated Ianna with a bile that would set the doddering old heads who whispered and _hurhm_ ed around her dead father's long table into shock.  Her dreams at night, after Ianna was done with switching her, were always of running.  Waking up and running far, far away over the Grassland Plains, hand in hand with Jedda. 

Both of them together, laughing, happy, and free. 

She knew it would never happen. 

After clearing her asthmatic throat with a light bronchial cough, Venna spoke. " I call this meeting of the Council to order.  My Lady and Warden to the Throne, Ianna Keldorn, will now speak on our business for the day." 

Venna fell back into her chair, her eyes fluttering, her throat tight and whistling.  Colours and shades danced before her eyes in the darkened room.  She listened muzzily to Ianna's words. 

"My Lords and Ladies, we live in a time of darkness and coming crisis.  I am sure you have all heard the rumours that the Fallen One has awoken." 

A series of sharp mutters and muted gasps went around the Chamber. 

"You have been called here today because these rumours are true." 

More mutters, gasps, and a few cries. 

"The Fallen One is raising his armies of the dead in the Nightlands to the east.  Our scouts and spies report that he has sent emissaries to the Three Kingdoms, bypassing Highmount entirely through some means.  The word is that they are negotiating with the Fallen One.  The price of fealty to him is their dead, and their prize is that their lands will not be sacked and burned." 

"Has such an emissary been received by the Crown, O Warden?"  The question came from the one youthful face among the councillors: Mikka Wyrlsorn.  He was a short, scrawny man dressed in black and gold.  A closely-trimmed and curled black beard framed a ferret's face with protruding hazel eyes.  His eyes were on Ianna, more challenging than those of any other at the table. 

"None so far, Councillor Mikka, but we expect one any day now, which is why this gathering has been called." 

"To discuss the terms of our fealty to the Fallen One?" 

The mutterings around the table took on an angry tone. 

Councillor Della, his beard nearer to white than grey and his red robes shimmering with ornate silver filigree, rose to his feet and glowered at Mikka. " You would treat with the Fallen One, Mikka?  You would break the oath that was sworn by the Founders of Highmount? _ You soft dog of a boy!_  We must stand!  If Fallen-born and Fellfolk come, then we must hold the pass in which our city stands to the last woman or man!  I was there when His Five Shadows led Drujja and Fellspawn into E'phah!  I commanded men and women who fought and drove back his demons into the Nightlands!" 

"Peace, brothers and sisters.  I speak only the truth of our situation. _ If_ the kingdoms see fit to lay down, rather than raise their swords, then the terms of such treaties with the Fallen One must be ... reasonable." 

More were on their feet now, shouting and pointing at Mikka.  None moved to strike him.  They only brayed and bantered until the room was an echo chamber of righteous ravings.  Venna cringed as the sounds came to a crescendo. 

" _Peace!"_ 

Ianna's word had a shattering effect upon the councillors.  All fell silent and returned to their seats. 

"Brothers and sisters, Mikka is a councillor as are you all, and the purpose of these gatherings is for us to discuss and consider all opinions brought to the table.  Is that not so?" 

Murmurs of agreement answered her. 

"Now, as Mikka and Della have illustrated, we have choices before us.  The Founders swore their oath to hold the pass against the Fallen One and his kith, no matter what.  But, chivalry aside, we must consider our position..."

Mutters, dark and sharp in tone, arose once again. 

"We must consider our position as a city that is not all that it once was.  The ascension of Queen Venna, following her dear father's death, was not without its ... difficulties.  Women and men who manned the walls have since deserted us and taken their families with them, leaving us a force of less than a thousand to stand against invaders.  As you know, the Fallen One's forces are legendary and powerful.  With less than a thousand, we will be swept away if we do not treat with his emissary." 

Sighs and moans followed, and a few sobs from the women at the table. 

Marra, a former Watcher, asked, "So, we are to give our dead over to the Fallen One?  That is it.  Without question?" 

Mikka answered her. " It is a small price to pay if it means the survival of the living." 

"But does it?"  Marra went on. " We give him our dead and from them he fashions more Fellfolk, more dead-men for his rank and file.  His armies will grow and grow, and we will be responsible for that.  Before we know it, he will be able to sweep all of the kingdoms away in a matter of years, maybe even months." 

Mikka sighed and scratched at his prematurely balding pate. " What else would you suggest, Marra?  We have no means of bargaining.  We may try to lie and cheat but what if he sends one of His Five Shadows to our gates?  You've heard the stories as well as I. Such a creature will see right through any deception and bring the full fury of the Fallen-born against us." 

"There is one thing we can do," said Ianna. 

Mikka's head snapped around to face her, his brow crinkling, his eyes wide and surprised. " And what might that be, Lady Warden?" 

"A'aron." 

"By the Mother," Della muttered, tugging at his whiskers. 

"You can't be serious, Lady Warden," Mikka said. " The Sword Without a Blade?  It was lost more than five hundred years ago." 

"Not lost," Della said. " I know the legends well, better than you, I should think." 

Mikka's lips curled at the old man's jibe. 

"A'aron sleeps with its sighs and whispers, robed in prophecy and damnation atop the heights of the Fellhorn." 

"I know all of that, Della, but just because old tales are told, it does not make them true.  Besides, the Fellhorn lies in the Western Wastes.  Who in the world would go there by choice?" 

"If I were not so old, I would go," said Della. " I would make my life forfeit for Highmount and the Three Kingdoms." 

Mikka frowned and turned again to Ianna. " My Lady Warden, if you please, I think the Council should know what exactly is being suggested beyond the chasing of old ghosts and myths." 

"The counsel I have received comes from a man known to you all: Ossen of the Wayfarers." 

The mention of his name roused Venna from her quiet lethargy.  She remembered Ossen coming to the court when she was little, telling stories of the other lands and distant kingdoms to a rapt audience of herself and Jedda.  Conjuring fireworks, faerie dancers and shadow puppets in their private rooms. 

Mikka gave a contemptuous snort. " Old One-Eye is in Highmount, is he?  I thought he was too good, great, and mighty for the likes of us." 

"Still your tongue, Councillor.  Ossen is a Wayfarer and thus accorded due respect." 

Her words hanging in the air, Ianna moved from the table to the doors of the Chamber and opened them.  In strode Ossen.  Seeming to pause to reflect for a second longer on Mikka than the others, he then drew himself up to his full height, revealing his stoop to be an act of frailty.  A darkness appeared to enter the chamber as he addressed them in a voice that seemed to resonate rather than be spoken. 

"You have my greetings, Queen Venna.  Lady Warden.  Councillors of Highmount.  As has already been discussed, there is a way to save the city from the armies of the Fallen.  But it is no light or easy task to undertake.  The Fellhorn lies over the Grassland Plains, across the Mountains of Mourning in the Western Wastes.  I offer my services to lead the party that will travel on this journey; as a Wayfarer, it is my duty to do so in such times of need.  How long we would be gone, I do not know.  Whether we would succeed in what we set out to do, I cannot be sure.  Whether we would come back, it is beyond—"

"To be sure," Mikka interrupted, "you wish us to trust in a wild hog's hunt.  To wait in vain for that which may never come whilst we are crushed under the trampling feet of Fallen-born and Fellfolk, yes?" 

Silence, sick and uneasy, reigned in the room as Mikka's hazel eyes met and matched Ossen's penetrating stare.  The other Councillors plucked at their beards and twirled their tresses.  No-one had spoken to a Wayfarer in such a way before. 

Mikka turned to Venna rather than Ianna. " My Queen, I am your humble and honoured servant, and I have to say that this scheme of your Lady Warden beggars belief and, indeed, sanity." 

Everyone at the table seemed to hold their breath.  It had been many years since a member of the Council had directly challenged the throne in such a way.  Venna shuffled in her chair, trying to sit straighter and show more dignity.  In the dimness of the chamber, she hoped no-one could see her blush.  She hoped her father's shade was not there somewhere, watching. 

"Speak your mind, Councillor Mikka.  We would know all you have to say." 

"My Queen, you wish to entrust the future of this city and the Three Kingdoms to a Wayfarer—a wandering old druid who knows no more of ruling and governing than he does of herding chickens in a farmyard." 

"What would you have us do, Councillor?" 

"I move that this idiotic and foolish scheme be dismissed by the Council, and that we instead send word that we wish to treat with the Fallen One.  Legends are no basis upon which to make informed decisions." 

"You think me uninformed, Councillor?"  Ianna asked. 

The Warden's hand fell on Venna's shoulder, gripping hard until the child bit her lips and became quiet.  Ossen noticed this, with a flicker of his eyes. 

"Lady Warden, I believe you to be as informed as the rest of us on the situation.  However, I believe this suggestion from the Wayfarer to be misguided and one that would put the people of the city at risk were we to follow through with his quest.  Such things are fine as tales to be recited around campfires and over flagons in a street tavern, but not when we are talking of the hair's breadth difference between war and peace." 

"The Wayfarer has a name, Councillor." 

"I give my respectful apologies to you, Ossen, if you consider me to have spoken out of turn.  My concern is merely for Highmount and its people." 

Ossen nodded, giving no sign of emotion otherwise; his aged face remained an implacable mask. 

Ianna smiled her coldest smile and addressed the Council. " Lords and Ladies of Highmount, I ask you now to vote on the matters at hand.  Those who wish to hold the pass and honour the oath of our Founders, say aye." 

A low chorus of ayes rippled around the room. 

"Those who wish to treat with the Fallen One, say aye." 

Mikka's sole aye was a lonesome sound. 

"Finally, those who agree that we should take heed of the Wayfarer's words and trust him to retrieve A'aron from the Fellhorn, say aye." 

There were more ayes than there were nays, but only just enough to carry the decision.  Lord Della's aye decided the vote. 

"Thank you all.  I call this meeting of the Council to close," said Ianna. 

With a scraping of chairs and inconsequential chattering, the Council dispersed. 

~ ~ ~

Councillor Mikka returned to his chambers.  Once inside, checking his windows and doors were secure, he retired to a small room between his bedchamber and personal library.  The room was in darkness and unlit.  In the centre stood something tall and wide concealed by a covering of black velvet.  He carefully unfastened the velvet cover, folded it, and placed it in a corner.  Then he stood and stared deep into the highly polished surface of a mirror.  Its burnished solid silver frame was a tangle of obscenities: the naked, mutilated corpses of men and women strung together and tormented by rotting creatures that were themselves flayed, limbless, and deformed in many foul ways.  With his hands, Mikka made a series of passes over the opaque surface until there was a sign of movement within the glass.  The opacity seemed to writhe and surge in on itself, as if it were a body of water and he had just dropped a stone into it.  With a final gesture, Mikka made the glass flare cold and bright, and then he was looking in upon a great underground cavern.  It had the proportions of a cathedral, although the rank appearance of a funeral vault.  At the centre of the cavern was a carved edifice and upon it was a sculpture of a colossal hunched and hooded figure.  Though it was only stone, the sight of it made Mikka's flesh crawl and his skin to become pebbled with a numbing sweat.  Flexing his fingers and blinking hard, Mikka drew in a deep breath and walked towards the mirror. 

Closer.  Closer.  Closer. 

And then he strode through it into the Great Hall of the Fallen One beneath the Shadowhorn Mountain.  It was like passing through a layer of ice, and Mikka could not stop the cry that came from him as he set his feet down on rough, lichen-crusted rock.  Frost and ice glistened upon black stalactites and stalagmites that sprouted throughout the Great Hall.  Rubbing his arms and torso against the encroaching cold, Mikka took tentative steps forwards. 

"Welcome, Mikka.  What news from the world of the living?" 

Robed and hooded like the stone colossus, the speaker stepped out of the shadows.  The little light cast by phosphorescent lichen in the cavern briefly illuminated his face, even as it was hidden beneath the hood's darkness.  Mikka felt his stomach turn over as he glimpsed the white bone of a skull. 

"I am E'blis of the Fallen, Mikka Wyrlsorn.  Come. _ Speak!_ "  He thudded a polished black staff, which was surmounted by a horned ram's skull embossed with blood-red script, upon the floor. 

Mikka shuffled nervously on his feet, licking lips that were as dry as old leather. " Th-the Wayfarer, Ossen, has come to Highmount, as was known.  And he has put the journey to the Fellhorn to the Council.  It was agreed to, as was expected." 

"You bring excellent tidings, Councillor.  What news of the party that is to make the journey?" 

"I-I do not know yet.  The Wayfarer said that A'aron—"

The syllables of the legend's name reverberated around the cavern, making Mikka feel as if he were caught in the interior of a great, tolling bell.  There was a terrible grinding sound from the unmoving stone figure of the Fallen One.  The sonorous sound of the name gradually lessened, and so then did the shaking of His statue. 

"Take a care which names you speak aloud in His presence, Mikka Wyrlsorn.  It sleeps atop the Fellhorn.  The Master feels it and hates it.  The sword must not be taken by her, and the Living Flame must be extinguished.  We will see to it now that the Path is set.  We have a willing agent, well schooled in our plans.  And, in exchange for your good service, the city of Highmount and its Three Kingdoms will be yours, as Warden, once Venna falls." 

Mikka's eyes flicked for a moment to the stone shape on the great throne.  He could feel it now, the cold that was eating away at his flesh and bones here.  Its source was the Fallen One, and that slow, arctic death was emanating in bleak, barren waves from the statue.  How could such a _thing_ possibly be threatened by any force in this World? 

Hurriedly, he continued speaking, ripping his eyes away from the Fallen One. " Highmount will open her gates to the Fallen-born and the last Three Kingdoms shall come under His Shadow.  I will see to it in His name." 

"Indeed.  It shall be so.  See it is done and done well.  Return, Mikka Wyrlsorn, and prepare the way.  The Shadow of His Darkness go with you." 

"And with you, E'blis of the Fallen." 

Mikka turned and crossed back into the small room in his chambers.  The cold was gone, but the blackness of that place came with him through the portal of the mirror, rooting itself in his soul, binding him to the Fallen One, E'blis and the Shadowhorn Mountain.  He thought of the way that damned Shadow of His Darkness moved, ebbing and flowing like a black ocean, preparing to drown all things. 

Mikka Wyrlsorn sank to his knees and began to weep. 

~ ~ ~

#  _Chapter Nine_

_Sarah awoke with a start.  The house was as it had been in her dream, only it was not quite as dark outside.  Not yet._ 

_It had been so real, felt so real, she thought._ 

_She dressed and pulled her boots on quickly before hunting for a weapon.  She found Woran's axe by the fireplace, where it always was.  Woran trusted Esiah, despite everything.  Their families had shared blood and ties too long for him to truly suspect anything worse than rough words and backwoods gossip._ 

_So why had the axe not been there in the dream?  So I wouldn't hack the Wayfarer's head off?  Why would he be afraid of that, if it were only a dream?  Can someone die in a dream?_ 

_"_ _Too many questions," she muttered as she hefted the axe._ 

_It was a small, single-handed axe made for cutting firewood, not people, and it was weighted just right for a frail old man and herself.  How much damage could it do?_ 

_"_ _I'll cut them open if I have to.  If they've hurt him badly..."_

_Her words were cut off by a sound coming from outside.  It sounded further away than it had been in the dream, but there all the same: high, feral, and forlorn.  Without a moment's more thought, Sarah left the house and hurried down the hill.  If she ran, she could make it to the woods before it got dark._ 

_"_ _I'm coming, Woran.  I'm coming, Barra."_ 

~ ~ ~

She ran for the border of trees that seemed to rise and fall on the horizon as she traversed inclines and slopes.  Sarah felt like she had been running for hours.  Time got lost as the dark gathered in around her, and the last traces of sunlight ebbed away across the landscape.  As she ran, she found herself listening for that horrible howling, but it did not come again.  She kept her eyes on the valley—the houses, the hollows and the old sheds.  She watched for Taproots and Saltwines.  Even thinking of the names made her fingers tighten on the haft of the axe. 

"If they've hurt him badly, I'll crack their heads open like old soup bowls." 

Every nerve in her body was straining, every muscle tense.  She saw the border of the trees dip and rise, the thin dark line slowly growing thicker, coming closer. 

_Too slow,_ she thought _.  I'll never get there in time._ 

But she did not stop running.  She pushed on, pushing herself harder than before. 

~ ~ ~

It was quiet in the woods as she entered, crossing into shadow. 

"Woran?  Barra?" 

Her call was the slightest whisper.  If Esiah was still about, she didn't want him to know she was here.  He might have others with him, and there was no sense letting them get the jump on her.  Dim light leaked through the canopy of branches and leaves. 

_Just like the Wood Beneath the Worlds_ , she thought. _ Three years ago now, and I'm back where I started.  Except I started at home, and I don't know how to get back there._ 

Biting back tears, Sarah swallowed hard and ducked low before creeping on into the undergrowth, rising onto the balls of her feet. 

A scattering of twigs crackled underfoot. 

_Loud,_ she thought. _ Far too loud._ 

She waited, looking and listening, barely breathing. 

Nothing.  No sounds.  No shouts.  No cries. 

Time to move. 

She went on, deeper into the trees. 

It wasn't until she had gone on for some time that she realised what had made the woods seem like the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  There were no sounds of animals or birds, no rustling leaves, not even a nightingale's song. 

It wasn't right. 

She emerged into the open of a clearing. 

The bodies of the dead had been left where they had fallen—Taproots and Saltwines, all of them.  Sarah tried not to look at them.  She tried not to think of what their presence meant.  She crept on past the dead, as if she were still in the trees.  A hand snatched out and wrung her ankle, tight and hard.  She didn't scream, although she really wanted to.  She kicked at it, tried to shake it off.  It held on, tighter and tighter.  She tugged at the fingers, trying to ignore the glottal choking sound coming from the throat of the dark-haired woman the hand belonged to. 

Elssa Taproot. 

Sarah could see light in Elssa's dead eyes, flickering and dim. 

" _We are the dead."_  Elssa spoke _. " We are with you.  Always with you, Sarah Bean.  We are the same.  We are the same, O Flame."_ 

Then, the fingers went loose.  Sarah shook them off.  Her worried eyes were on the trees ahead. 

That light in Elssa's eyes, did I see that?  Did I hear her speak?  Was that real, or is this still the dream?  Am I still back at the house?  Am I still on the bus on the way home from school in Okeechobee? 

Wake up, Sarah!  Wake up! 

Sarah shook her head violently and then opened her eyes.  Tears were running down her face.  She was still in the dark, in the woods of the Norn Valley, in a strange World she didn't know.  She wiped at her nose and eyes.  Then she closed her eyes and pinched herself.  Breathed in.  Breathed out.  Opened her eyes. 

Still here.  This is real.  Not a dream. 

A dead woman talked to me. 

Mother, save me. 

"It's okay.  I'm fine.  I'm fine." 

Sarah crept across the rest of the clearing's open ground, making sure she did not look at the dead again.  Trees loomed ahead, their branches and boles looking like colossal stalactites dangling from the lightless cavern of the sky.  No stars were out tonight.  It had been a clear enough day, but now there were masses of craggy grey clouds overhead.  Keeping her breathing as steady as she could, Sarah went on into the heart of the woods. 

_I don't want to go on,_ she thought, _but I must._ 

The stilled woodland folded in around her, brushing her face with leaves.  The air tasted of mould.  Sarah could feel the sweat pouring from her.  Shadows clung to her like trailing ghosts, making her feel stained and soiled. 

Then, the gathering storm broke overhead. 

Rain tumbled from the heavens, a barrage from on high that cut into her as surely as if the rain had been cold swords and freezing knives.  The undergrowth churned into thick rivers, soaking through her boots, catching at her with vines and the knotty fingers of tree roots.  Head bowed to the downpour, Sarah slogged on. 

_Maybe they'll be just up ahead_. 

As the storm pounded at her, she came to another clearing, and there were Woran and Barra.  The corpse of Esiah Taproot was not far from them, on its back.  The eyes stared upward, the face fixed in a pained expression of shock and disbelief.  Sarah rocked from the balls of her feet to her heels and back again.  The rain shrouded all movement in the clearing, but she was sure it was being watched by whomever, or _whatever_ , had slain the Taproots and Saltwines.  This was a trap; she knew it.  It was plain to see, but that also made it so perfect.  As she watched Barra protectively circling Woran, who was as unmoving as the dead Esiah, she knew she could not leave them even if they were bait meant for her. 

_The man in my dream said I would not be alone_ , she thought. 

Alone or not, Sarah knew what she had to do. 

She stepped out into the clearing, brandishing the small axe.  Holding the haft tight, ready to swing at the slightest sight or sound, she crept towards the man who had cared for her these three long years.  Barra licked at her hands and face as she knelt down by Woran.  She smiled, despite the dark and the rain.  She could see the old man's chest rising and falling.  Each breath was a laboured sign of life.  Woran's eyes flickered.  She could see a dark patch spreading across his shoulder.  Reaching for it, wincing, Sarah drew back the torn cloth and saw the wound.  It was deep and already ulcerous, even with the rain washing it. 

What could have done something like this? 

Rustling came from all around her.  Barra began his circling once more, now around Sarah as well as Woran.  He jumped and barked at the shadows that fringed the clearing.  Sarah got to her feet, axe in hand. 

_We are so small,_ she thought, _Barra and I. What chance do we have?_ 

Five shapes arose from the shadows, stalking out to stand around them.  Swords were drawn, scraping rustily from aged scabbards.  Sarah could not see whether they wore hooded cloaks or were still embraced by the clinging dark.  Her eyes hurt as she tried to look at them.  They were not quite there, seeming to blur and fade and flicker like the black ghosts cast by dying candlelight. 

_Like my dream_ , she thought, _before I came here.  All those years ago.  The dream on the bus.  The mountain I climbed.  These things were there._ 

They cut my head off. 

"Oh, god.  Okay." 

She gritted her teeth to try to stop the shaking of her body.  They closed in, tightening the circle around her just as she had dreamed, though this was a forest clearing rather than a mountain peak. 

I'm going to die. 

Then they stopped.  Still flickering, but frozen.  Still as statues.  Sarah felt a pulsing knot of tension relax inside her, just for a moment.  Then she heard it—an awful rising sound, the feral howl that had haunted her all the way here.  It was coming from all around her, from the black shapes.  And they were suddenly moving again, faster than the falling rain, passing in and out of sight, their swords raising and dashing down.  Sarah shouted her own wordless cry as she struck out, spinning awkwardly, falling clumsily, dodging and weaving, missing sword slashes by a hair's breadth each time.  The blows that fell on her axe tore chunks from the wood of the haft, and she was sure they were blunting its blade more and more.  It was as much as she could do to defend herself from the storm of shadow-swords.  Striking back at them was beyond her strength and skill. 

She was driven to her knees.  Her arms, legs, and back were aching from the strain on her muscles.  Peals of thunder underscored the screams of the black shapes.  Flares of lightning illuminated faces that Sarah wished she had not seen—bleached bone, torn skin, hollow eyes and hanging mouths.  She fought on, rolling and scrambling away from their swords.  The wet earth seemed to steam as the poisonous metal bit into it.  The haft of the axe was now little more than a splintered stick, and the blade was a battered lump of flint.  Soon it would be useless, and she would be at their mercy. 

Then it all stopped. 

The swords were no longer cutting through the air.  There was only the relentless pounding rhythm of the rain about her, and the shapes seemed frozen once more.  Sarah got gingerly to her feet, her wet hands raw on the worn wood of the axe.  Her eyes passed from one shape to the next, watching, waiting.  One sprang to life again.  It came at her, lunging forward.  Sarah raised the axe.  The blow of the sword shattered the haft and sent her tumbling back down onto the ground.  Sarah saw a smile form in the shadows of the creature's pale face, a drawn rictus under its stark, staring eyes. 

"I know you," Sarah said. 

And she did.  She could see the familiar face there, though it was starved of life and worn so thin. 

" _Trianna!"_  Sarah felt frozen.  She remembered the last time she had seen the girl.  Trianna had been holding her down.  Her eyes went to the other four shapes.  Were they Geneva and the others?  How could this be?  How could they be there?  And what had done this to them? 

She looked back to the thing that wore what remained of Trianna's face.  There was no remembrance in those empty eyes, but it had stopped when Sarah had spoken the name.  She was frozen again, as before.  She got to her feet, her heart racing as she took a step forward. " Trianna?  Can you hear me?  I know ... we weren't friends ... before ... but—"

Sarah was cut off. 

She screamed as the dark blade pierced her side.  Black hatred twisted Trianna's fading face as she drove the sword hard and deep into Sarah's flesh. 

_He said I wouldn't be alone,_ Sarah thought, _but I am._ 

I'm going to die alone here. 

Lightning flared again and Sarah fell to the ground.  The world grew dark and then burned with light, roaring and screaming around her.  She heard words shouted over the noise of the storm that was breaking inside her head. 

"Shadows, shades and blight!  Begone!  Five Shadows, begone!  Leave this place!  Go!" 

The rain ran into her eyes and her fingers felt the warm wound in her side.  She looked up and saw him standing there with a great white horse at his side.  The man from her dream, his one eye shining bright.  He wove lightning and blue fire from the air.  The screaming from the shadows grew louder.  She could smell something bitter and bad burning.  Colours swam over darkness and sound dissolved into static.  She heard the one-eyed man's voice for a moment before she was taken under by the blackness. 

"... too late ... let me not be too late for her..."

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Ten

Warmth, dryness, soft sheets, and the smell of home. 

Momma...? 

Sarah's eyes flickered open.  She yawned, and winced at the pain that darted though her limbs.  Sitting up slowly, wiping grains of sleep from her eyes, she looked around.  Mom wasn't there, and she was not at home.  She didn't know where she was.  The room was small and plain with wattle-and-daub walls.  A sole window let in the deepening shades of evening through its lattice framework.  Sheets and blankets were piled over her to keep out the cold, and an oil-fed storm lantern was set on the bedside dresser to light the room.  She was wearing a crumpled cream-coloured shift that was much too big for her, and there was a great aching in her right side.  Throwing aside the sheets, she rolled up the shift so she could see what was there.  A raw wound that looked like a large burst boil, surrounded by bruise-purpled flesh.  It was red and tender, but Sarah could see smudges on the skin where ointment and balm had been worked in. 

She touched it with a fingertip. 

And she remembered: Woran, Barra, the black shapes, their shadow-swords, Trianna's bilious face, and the searing pain from being stabbed.  Sarah got to her feet and felt a wave of dizziness wash over her, sending her crashing into the wall, where she leaned for long minutes, staring into the middle distance, catching her breath. 

The door opened. 

"You should not be out of bed, Sarah." 

It was Ossen, the Wayfarer, just as he had appeared in her dream. 

_And he was there in the clearing at the end, after I fell,_ she thought. 

"You ... were there.  You saved me." 

His one eye blinked. " Yes, but I was too late to save you from being wounded." 

"I'll get better.  I'm all right." 

"You are sick and tired, now please get back into the bed before I call Mistress Ruth to do so for you." 

"Who's Mistress Ruth?" 

"You have been sleeping in her bed these past two days." 

"Two days!" 

"Indeed, the wound you took from that Fallen-born blade was grievous.  It took all my knowledge of the Dark to unweave its poison and Mistress Ruth's understanding of remedies to heal your flesh.  She is a most talented Herb-Sister, one of the best I know, and still you were a challenge to her skills.  Now please, to bed." 

Sarah, shaking a little, clambered back under the sheets.  Their warmth and weight felt good.  Standing, even for a short time, had left her feeling as thin and fragile as spun glass. 

"I can't believe this.  I'm talking to a man I met in a dream." 

"And you came to this World from the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  I think I am the least of the strange things you have seen and known in the last few years." 

Sarah smiled. " That's true.  I wish Momma were here to see this." 

Ossen's face deepened with a sad frown. " They miss you as much as you do them, Sarah." 

"You've _seen_ them?  Have you spoken to them?  Told them I'm all right?" 

"No.  I am a Wayfarer.  A wanderer along the Paths of the Thirteen Worlds.  I see and hear much that takes place in them.  But I do not interfere where it is not permitted." 

"Do they think I'm dead?' 

"Three years is a long time, Sarah.  But the Flame burns in them, as it does in you.  They wait for you.  They hope.  They always will." 

"People keep saying that to me: the Flame.  What is the Flame?" 

"That is not for me to tell you just now.  Later, when you are well rested, we can talk." 

"Can you tell me if I will get home?  I thought the White Rider was going to take me home, but he brought me here." 

"The White Rider does as it wills.  You can no more tell it where to take you than you could tell Gorra to stop growing his trees or Yagga to give up her witchcraft." 

"That doesn't answer my question." 

"It should." 

"You mean you can't tell me that either.  Great." 

"I am sorry, Sarah, but there are some things beyond me.  Your Path will lead you where it takes you; no more than that can I say." 

Sarah dropped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling, seeing Momma there in the cracks and lines, and Dad as well.  She could feel tears prickling at her eyes. 

"Can you leave please, Ossen.  I want to be alone for a while." 

"Sarah—"

"Please." 

The Wayfarer left. 

Sarah let the tears come and wept quietly in peace. 

~ ~ ~

Later, dry-eyed, Sarah arose from the bed.  It was dark outside, but she found clothes waiting for her at the foot of the bed: brown breeches, a cream shirt, a tan leather jerkin, and scuffed boots.  She dressed and went to the door, pausing to listen. 

It was quiet outside. 

Opening the door without a creak, she then crept into the corridor outside, looking both ways.  A few more doors extended away from her to a blank wall.  The other direction led to stairs downwards.  Sarah headed towards the stairs. 

A cold wind blew at her back.  Turning, she saw the blank wall at the end of the corridor.  It was rippling and pulsing, lining with cracks that slowly split wide open.  A sudden silence fell as the wall opened to become a pale toothless mouth, and out of it flowed a darkness—a darkness that resolved itself into a column of fumes and swirling smoke.  Moving strangely, flowing fast then freezing still, it came towards her much like the Fallen-born had, seemingly out of phase with the world, ill at ease with it.  Not a part of it.  Silence and stillness washed over Sarah as it came nearer.  She opened her mouth, but no sound would come out.  She could feel her temperature rising, peaking with fever, as she fought to move and run from this thing of soundless smoke.  Sickly, soft laughter echoed inside her head.  The shadow's shifting, foggy folds flickered like a dance of black flames. 

" _You cannot hide from me, O Flame ... I know you as you know me ... nowhere are you safe ... you are your own prison ... a prison without walls..."_

It loomed, tall and high, over her.  Its depths seemed to gape at her, hungry, aching.  Sarah raised her hands to ward it off, knowing they were no defence. 

Suddenly, fire and lightning smote at the darkness, hurling it back.  A torrent of brilliance crucified the smouldering column, shattering it into streamers and a fading black mist that thrashed and ululated in horrid high tones. 

The source of the fire and lightning was Sarah. 

It was gushing from her outstretched hands, tidal wave after tidal wave rolling down the corridor towards the dark invader, pounding at it.  Thunder.  Fury.  Light.  Anger.  Purity.  It poured from her outthrust hands, then from her mouth, her torso and her eyes.  But she could still see the darkness struggling against the light.  It was being held by it, worn away by it.  What little substance it had was steadily evaporating.  It writhed once more and then, in a gout of smoke and fumes, it was gone, leaving only a soot-black smear upon the wall.  The fire and lightning thinned out, trickling down to nothing, and then they, too, were gone.  Sarah sagged to the ground, gasping, but hands caught her and laid her down.  Ossen was kneeling beside her, his one eye glittering bright. " I told you to stay in bed, Sarah." 

"Ossen ... what was that?" 

"A Drujja.  Another emissary of the Fallen One.  The name means The Storm that Walks.  You are lucky that you were able to face it in your condition.  It seems that the hunt for you is truly on.  We have very little time.  Come with me." 

~ ~ ~

They were inside a room that was shadowed, although lit by a few candles.  The air was heavy and thick.  Fragrant fumes rose in purple-blue clouds from smouldering bowls set around the two beds.  On the small bed, swaddled in linen, lay Barra.  On the large bed, was Woran, his eyes closed.  A stained bandage wrapped his shoulder, and another, his brow.  Sarah stepped closer and saw his eyes twitch beneath their lids.  She could see Barra's chest steadily rising and falling, despite the dimness. 

They were alive. 

A motherly woman with long blonde hair, who wore a frock of patterned woodland shades, was bustling around the beds, checking the bowls and the patients by turn. 

"You must be Mistress Ruth," Sarah said. 

"Yes.  I guess I must be.  Yes.  Now, you come on over here with me.  There's someone wants to see you." 

"Thank you, Mistress Ruth.  For healing me.  And them.  I don't know what I would have done if—"

"Don't speak a word of it now, Sarah.  I know your story.  You've lost one family already.  Losing another would be too much for your heart.  I know, I know." 

There was a weight to her words that Sarah didn't ask about. " Mistress Ruth, what happened to us?  What were those things?" 

"Best you be asking that question to your Wayfarer there.  I heal and I soothe; I don't talk of that which causes pain and wounds, if I can help it." 

A groan came from Woran.  His eyes opened. 

"Can I speak to him?" 

"For a little while, yes.  But go easy on him.  He's been there and back again as far as sickness and nightmares are concerned.  He needs a lot of rest." 

Sarah nodded and went to Woran.  His eyes found hers and a strained smile spread across his face. " Sarah ... you're well.  Those things ... Fallen-born ... they said they were going to ... that you were going to ..."

"Don't say it.  They didn't, Woran.  I'm okay." 

She didn't mention the fight, the tiredness, or the pain that was still lingering on in her side.  Woran shifted on the bed. 

"Careful now, you.  I'll not have you collapsing and falling about the place," said Mistress Ruth. 

But Woran didn't get up; instead, he drew a hand out from under the sheets and placed something in Sarah's hand. 

_"_ _Take this, Sarah.  May it harm all those who seek to harm you.  It was no help when they jumped me—the Saltwines and Taproots—but maybe it'll be of better use in the hand of someone young and spry."_ 

_He pressed a long dagger into her hand; one that she knew well.  It was called Fang.  It was one of his treasures from the war.  Polished silver decorated with curls of leaf, vine, and thorn along the hilt and blade._ 

_"_ _Thank you, Woran.  But I won't need it.  As soon as you're better, we're going back to the hill and the valley.  I don't want to go further out into the world."_ 

_Woran's smile grew sad. " You must, my dear.  You must go with Ossen.  He will see you safe along the Path now.  I have done what I could."_ 

_"_ _But why must I go?"_ 

_"_ _Because you keep the Flame inside you.  He told me.  He sees it.  And so does the Black Lord Under the Mountan."_ 

_"_ _I don't care if he sees it.  I don't want to go.  I don't want to lose you or Barra.  I want to go home, away from this.  Don't make me leave you, Grandfather."  With tears in her eyes, she flung herself at him.  Their embrace was hard, but loving and close._ 

_"_ _Save yourself and live the journey, Sarah," Woran whispered, kissing her brow. " The Path is long and hard, and it hurts our hearts and feet, but we all must walk it.  Now is your time.  Please.  Trust me and go with him."_ 

_"_ _Live the journey, Grandfather," Sarah said, hovering close to him and wiping her eyes. " You're the only family I've got left now.  I'll come back for you, after it's all over and done with.  Count on it."_ 

_"_ _I hope so, Sarah ... I hope so."_ 

_With those words, Woran let out a long sigh and sank back into his pillow to sleep.  Sarah let herself be led away by Mistress Ruth and Ossen, looking back to Woran and Barra.  They seemed so small surrounded by the scented shadows and warm darkness of the room._ 

_So small._ 

~ ~ ~

Sarah was seated at the dining table, which was laden with bread, cheese, and cold cuts of meat, as well as flagons of fruit juice and some stronger beverages.  Ossen sat at the opposite end of the table, sucking hard on a stubby darkwood pipe and blowing streamers of strongly-scented smoke from his thin nostrils.  Sarah ate under the watchful eye of Mistress Ruth, who tutted and sighed whenever the girl asked if she could have some more. 

"Of course you can.  Plenty here for you.  Tuck in.  You need to keep your strength up." 

Sarah finished off more cheese, bread, and meat than she was sure she had ever eaten, before sitting back in her chair and sipping at cinnamon-spiced apple juice. 

She gathered her thoughts, working out what questions she needed to ask. 

"Ossen, what is the Fallen One?" 

A streaming cloud of pipe-fumes wreathed the Wayfarer as he said, "We know very little of Him.  We know he does not come from this World but from another, possibly somewhere beyond the boundaries of the Thirteen.  He fell into this World when Seythe was first created.  Some wonder whether his arrival here was the spark that set Creation in motion—frightening thought that it may be.  But yes, he fell like a black and lightless star and was buried beneath what became known as the Shadowhorn Mountain in the east.  Over time, he has awoken when the stars in the heavens reach a certain alignment, and those who serve him seek to remake Seythe as he would wish it to be." 

"And the Fallen-born are?" 

"His Five Shadows—fragments of the Fallen One that have escaped from his tomb under the mountain." 

"But they had the faces of ... people I know from back home." 

"They are things of fear and nightmare, as is the Fallen One.  Your own terrors can shape them, in the same way that your eyes can sometimes see imagined things in the dark of night.  They are less than shadows and more than darkness.  Thank the Mother that there are only five of them." 

"And they are after me?" 

"They are after all of us, but yes, you in particular." 

A silence settled in the room as Sarah asked the final question that had been burning inside her. " What about me?  What am I?" 

"You are the Living Flame.  There is a Fire within you that is born to few across all of the Thirteen Worlds.  It can create.  It can destroy.  It can be whatever you wish.  It is the innate force that shapes all things from the beginning to the end of Time itself." 

"And it can destroy the Fallen One?" 

"Yes, Sarah.  Once you know the art of it, you would be able to stand against the Fallen One—possibly the only person in all of the Worlds who could." 

"I am the Flame," she said the words quietly out loud, tasting them on her tongue. " What do I do now, then?  Those things are after us.  I'm not going to have the time to learn any arts while they're chasing us." 

"No.  That's true." 

"So, how do we kill them before they kill us?" 

She looked at Mistress Ruth, and then at Ossen, and then back again, seeking their guidance.  Mistress Ruth and Ossen also exchanged glances, as if agreeing on something. 

"Mistress Ruth?  Ossen?  Tell me." 

The Herb-Sister acquiesced and nodded. " You're right, my dear.  There is a way to kill Fallen-born, but it's outside my knowledge and that of the Wayfarer." 

Sarah turned back to Ossen, who was even more obscured in his pipe-smoke than before.  His one eye shone from within the cloud, like a blue midnight moon. 

"Ossen, tell me.  Please.  What must I do?  Where must I go?" 

The Wayfarer sighed. " You would need to travel to the Western Wastes that lie on the far side of the Mountains of Mourning.  There is a lone mountain there, the Fellhorn, brother to the Shadowhorn, and there is something driven into the very stone of the peak that can slay the Shades that pursue us." 

"What is it?" 

"A'aron—the Sword of Sighs.  It can only be drawn from the rock by one who bears the Flame.  It will channel and control the Fire inside you, and it will allow you to lay the Shades to rest forever, but it will be a long and dangerous journey, Sarah.  And not one from which you are certain to return." 

"But it's one I have to make, Ossen.  It's my Path, right?" 

"Yes, Sarah.  It is your Path.  Yours alone.  Only you can decide." 

"When must we go?" 

"Tonight," he said. " We must ride hard and fast and far.  They will be at our heels the whole way now that they have our scent and their Master has His eyes on you.  Will you have me with you, Sarah?" 

She raised her eyebrows at the question. 

The Wayfarer scratched lightly at the pink pucker of his absent eye. " I know things about what may lie ahead for you.  If you will have me, I will go with you and walk the Path that lies ahead." 

"Why are you asking me?" 

"Because a Wayfarer is no king to force his will upon others.  I ask, and I await your words." 

Sarah bit her lip. " Yes.  Please come with me, Ossen." 

He smiled, and so did Mistress Ruth. 

~ ~ ~

They set out the following morning with Sarah mounted on a stout grey pony and Ossen astride his white stallion.  Saddlebags were packed with victuals provided by Mistress Ruth.  She kissed Sarah on the cheek and embraced her tightly before letting her go.  Sarah watched the woman make no such gestures to Ossen, but there was a look in her eyes, and in his, of shared longing and sorrow, which made Sarah look away.  She let them have a moment alone.  Then Ossen was leading the way on his stallion, and Sarah was looking back at Mistress Ruth.  Sarah was sure Mistress Ruth did not leave the doorstep of her lonesome house until they were well out of sight, with the Northway Mountains looming ever larger before them as they travelled on to the city of Highmount. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Eleven

Highmount appeared to be more of a fortress than a city to Sarah.  Great walls of grey stone separating the city into those with wealth and those without.  The latter faced out onto the Grassland Plains and their part of the city was more often known as Plainstown than regarded as a true part of Highmount.  In the event of attack, the poor would be marshalled to defend their betters from invaders.  Or rather, they would fight while their betters fled to find sanctuary in the Three Kingdoms beyond. 

It had not always been so, but the centuries had worn away at the small society of Highmount until it became composed of two very distinct strata: dissolute decadence, and those born to poverty. 

Ossen and Sarah rode into the richer part of the city through the Norn gate. 

Sarah's eyes could barely tear themselves from the soaring cleft of the Northway Pass, in which the city was built, until she saw the beauty of the buildings around her.  In contrast to the functional grey stone of the outer wall, here was marble, rare limestone, and black quartz threaded with veins of silver, bronze, and gold.  Great windows let light in to the palatial structures of villas and grand halls, all with porches and alcoves supported by towering concentric columns.  The streets were remarkably clean, and gutters ran alongside the roads and pathways.  Workers from Plainstown could be seen sweeping rubbish into these gutters.  Ossen led the way to the largest building of them all—the Palace-Hall of Highmount, built into the craggy stone of the pass itself.  They dismounted and climbed the two hundred steps that led to its wrought-iron gates. 

"Why are we here, Ossen?" 

"To help a friend." 

The guards opened the gates and ushered Sarah and Ossen in.  They walked down the hewn corridor lit by flickering lanterns.  In alcoves, Sarah saw the sanguine faces of kings and queens of Highmount, carved from grey marble threaded with turquoise.  Precious stones glittered as eyes in each one, making her feel like she was being watched by the dead.  They came to the Court and waited at the edge of the crowd.  Sarah peeped through the gaps, catching glimpses of the underage queen, sitting awkwardly on the throne, and the regal woman at her side. 

"That is Venna and her warden, Ianna," said Ossen. 

A man knelt before them.  His bearing was noble and he was clad in leather armour.  Long, dark hair ran down to his shoulders. 

"I cannot be a party to this act, Majesty.  It is a barbarity, what you suggest.  A horror worthy of the bandits and thieves who roam the wilderlands.  Save us, even the druids of E'phah were not so cruel.  I beseech you to reconsider." 

Venna adjusted her position on the throne, but Ianna's green gaze held steady upon the man before her, his head bowed, his knuckles to the ground. 

"We hear your words, Earlman, and thank you for your plain speech." 

A tension left the air, and the Earlmen, Earlwomen, servants and slaves all seemed less stiff in their manner.  Fewer hands hung near to their swords. 

"Earlwomen and Earlmen of Highmount," said Ianna, "we have been persuaded by recent counsel that we must be safe and guarded in these treacherous times.  From north of the walls comes word of the Fallen One rising.  Every day, merchants and traders arrive at our gates with only their own person spared by those who rule the Grasslands.  This city of ours was built as a shield to the Three Kingdoms of women and men that survived the last war with the Fallen.  I stand before you today and say we have a duty here that we are bound to, and with that duty comes a trust laid upon our shoulders.  It is a heavy weight, true, but one that we all can bear together.  If Highmount and its people do not stand as one, then all shall fall." 

Licking her emerald-painted lips, Ianna waited for the whispers and chatter to die down. 

"To this end, it is my sad duty to proclaim that at dawn tomorrow Jedda Ferra will be put to death at the stake in the Plainstown Square—for treason against the throne and the dying words of her father, the King." 

A hush descended over all.  None came forward.  None spoke.  Venna lay back upon the throne, shaken, mute, and tearful.  Ianna smiled without shame.  Two short, sharp claps were the sign that the audience with the Crown was over.  All retired to their quarters in the city. 

None looked back. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twelve

Jedda was awoken by the sound of the cell door opening. 

"Who is it?  Who's there?" 

"An old friend, dear Jedda." 

"Ossen!"  She flung herself at him as the mage entered the cell, her arms squeezing his lank frame. 

"How do you fare, daughter of Ferra?" 

"You know how I fare.  It has been four years." 

"I know, and we must talk." 

Ossen turned to the guards and gestured for them to leave.  Neither felt sure enough to challenge the hard, unyielding gaze of the Wayfarer's eyes.  The iron door was closed, and Ossen's ancient fingers swept about in the air.  Jedda noticed a peace and quiet settling all about. 

"A simple spell for privacy, Jedda.  Now, tell me all that has transpired since I last walked the halls of your father's palace." 

"There's not much to tell, Ossen.  Ianna is as she always has been.  She knows how to charm and manipulate those she associates with.  She knows their secrets, and she turns them to her advantage.  Through them, she gained the support of the Earlwomen and Earlmen, so when father died I was locked away down here while she fashioned herself as Lady Warden with Venna on the throne." 

"Yes.  The rank stench from that woman and Mikka Wyrlsorn permeate this place." 

"Mikka?  The Council worm?" 

"Oh, yes.  I could see the blackness within each, as if it were in plain sight.  They mean to use our journey in order to strengthen their hold upon the city and its people.  Though they do not work as one, they might as well do so." 

"Our journey?  What journey is this?" 

"You know the tales I used to tell you?  Of the warriors, the kings and queens of legend?" 

"A'aron!  You mean to go to the Fellhorn, after all." 

"Yes, I do.  The Fallen One stirs, and so does A'aron.  And the Living Flame has come into the world." 

"She has?" 

"She is here with me now, and she has accepted my assistance in leading her to A'aron."  The old man sighed heavily and leaned back against the cell's stone walls. " And it is a long and dangerous journey we will take, Jedda.  No man or woman of the Three Kingdoms has tried to cross such a span of distance since the last war.  I have great fears for our safety." 

"I will go with you, Ossen, if that's what you are asking.  There is nothing for me here, except poison in my food or a taint worked into my bedsheets by one of Ianna's pet witches.  We will return to Highmount, with or without A'aron, and stand upon its walls against the Shadow of the Fallen One." 

Ossen smiled at her.  And at that moment, the door to the cell crashed open and a figure strode in on them. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Thirteen

Morning came to Highmount cold, bright, and bitter.  Ravens and black crows circled overhead, calling and croaking to one another.  People lined the streets, all unnaturally quiet.  Such a multitude was usually only seen on the festivals of Wintertide and Summernight.  The hush was as solemn as that which had fallen over the court chamber when Ianna made her proclamation. 

Jedda wanted to shiver from the chill that stole through her skin and bones.  She was barefoot and clad in a plain white shift.  The cart bumped its way through the streets.  The Plainstown Square stood before the far wall, which marked the end of the pass and the beginning of the Grassland Plains beyond.  When the city was first built, it was intended to be a killing ground for invaders seeking to reach the second wall.  Now, it was a marketplace as well as a centre for celebrations and festival dance.  On days like these, it was also used for executions.  Surrounding the square, Jedda recognised faces that had fought against her on behalf of Ianna.  Her heart screamed that they were traitors who would see her murdered for their own ends.  But as she looked into their downcast faces and wet eyes, she saw the truth.  War was coming; she knew that as well as they did.  The Fallen One was awakening, and all that stood between him and the Three Kingdoms was Highmount.  Better Ianna on the throne, who would fight tooth and claw to keep the darkness out, than a civil war that would tear apart the city and possibly even spread into the Three Kingdoms.  Her own eyes tearing, she nodded to those who had fought against her, and she hoped they saw her understanding. 

The cart clattered to a halt. 

In the centre of the square, where dancing-poles and braces of fireworks had often been assembled, were three stakes.  Bundles of kindling and sticks had been piled at the foot of each one.  Two of the stakes were already taken by Jorra and Kalla: Earlwoman and Earlman of Thanehold.  They had given Jedda their swords when all others sided with Ianna.  They were blindfolded, and they wore the same thin cotton shifts as Jedda.  She wanted to call out to them, to say something, but her mouth was as dry as the rickety old wood of the cart, from which she was led, by the hand, to her stake.  Clouds were gathering overhead, dark and threatening.  Jedda sent up a wish for the rains to fall and douse the flames that were to come.  She was bound to the stake by the rough hands of hooded men.  She could feel their fear in each trembling fumble of their knot tying.  She was still Ferra's heir, sentenced to burn for treason or not.  A blindfold was placed over her eyes, but she shook her head hard before they could tie it in place.  They drew hard breaths at her gesture and withdrew themselves.  Jedda looked up to see Ianna there, stepping out of her sedan chair and not even sparing a glance for the gathered nobles and common folk.  She had eyes for no-one but Jedda—the girl who had run screaming up the steps to the throne, her sword drawn, to run her step-mother through. 

Jedda thought that, in her place, Ianna would not be so bold as to refuse the blindfold. 

One of the hooded men strode over to Ianna and fell on one knee, knuckling the ground.  The wind, damp and heavy, blustered around the square now, stealing away the words exchanged between Ianna and the executioner.  Jedda saw him nod, arise, and bow before retreating into the shadows.  The shadows came alight and burned as three executioners strode out of them, all bearing torches bound with cloth and soaked heavily in oils to keep the flames strong in the bad weather.  They approached.  Jedda felt her muscles harden as she watched the flickering fire that would soon ignite the kindling bunched around her.  Drawing in a breath and raising her voice until her throat hurt, she addressed the gathering. 

"Good people, I am condemned and come here to die.  The fact of my treason is known to you, and my consenting thereunto.  But of my desire and will to do wrong by those of you who would see the Three Kingdoms rightly defended against the coming darkness, I wash my hands and state my innocence.  I would see you all saved, and if this comes to pass by my death, then let it be done." 

A hush fell before the gathering darkness of the storm, disturbed only by a few sobs from men and women alike.  The square was a tableau, only the flames of the torches seemed to move at all, threatening to be extinguished by damp gusts of wind.  As Jedda's eyes travelled over the waiting crowd, she saw a pale-faced girl with strange eyes that shone like amethyst jewels.  The girl was watching her and Jedda found her mouth moving of its own volition, forming four words. 

We will meet again. 

Then, the girl was gone. 

Who was she? 

"Men of the Black Hood, do your duty," Ianna said before bowing her head. 

Jedda wrinkled her nose at the false gesture of penitence and spat upon the ground.  Looking around, she saw that all heads were bowed.  Reassured, she allowed herself some tears as she uttered a last private prayer.  Then, the torches touched the kindling, and fire, fierce and sweltering, burst upwards.  Tongues of scarlet and yellow, sparking with flecks of gold, ate at wood and cotton, and then flesh and bone.  Screams carried into the Norn valley and out across the Grasslands on the wind, and the stains left by the ashes that fell from the three stakes were something the rains could never quite wash away. 

~ ~ ~

Later, a company of three made its way across the first stretches of the Grassland Plains and away from Highmount.  The companions were Sarah Bean, Ossen Wayfarer, and a slight figure swathed in black cloth from head to foot, so that only the eyes were visible.  Three was the number of Highmount, as it was of Norn and the valleys.  The number of fortune and fair journeys, and so their party came to no more than that. 

Ossen had told Sarah that their nameless companion was a warrior from an order called the Sworn.  Their names were abandoned as a part of their initiation, as well as their sex and gender.  They were ghosts and assassins.  Sarah was to address the warrior only as "O Sworn" and nothing else.  To use any other name or title of familiarity was to show disrespect. _ The eyes of the Sworn looked straight ahead across the Grassland Plains.  Sarah followed the gaze and felt a queasiness pass through her stomach lining.  The land was so flat and dry and barren compared to the valleys of Norn, even now with the blight upon them.  The air she breathed in was dusty, and her eyes stung from the grit that blew into them._ 

_"_ _Which way, O Sworn?"  asked the Wayfarer._ 

_The Sworn nodded ahead, dug its heels into its mount's flanks, and led the way into the Grassland Plains._ 

~ ~ ~

#  _Chapter Fourteen_

On the first night in the wild, Sarah saw eyes peering out from between thickets not so far away.  No moon illuminated the land around them, and the stars were covered over by clouds.  The darkness was near total, except for the light shining from those eyes, which were embedded in a shadow that did not seem to move, only to watch and to wait.  Grass, dry as old bones, rustled and crackled too loud in the still hours, which passed slowly as Sarah watched the eyes and the eyes watched her in return. 

Was it a ghost?  Did they have such things here? 

But the shadow seemed so dark and solid that she was sure it could not be. 

Was it Him? 

Sarah's breathing came hard and laboured, and her heart hammered.  She should do something.  Shout.  Scream.  Throw a rock at it.  Wake up Ossen and the Sworn.  But there was an air about that bright-eyed shadow she dared not disturb—that of a predator ready to pounce upon its prey.  Even with Ossen and the Sworn so close, she felt more alone than she had since she came into this World.  A tremble passed through her.  She tried in vain to steady her breathing. 

What are you? 

Those eyes, lit by limpid fire, continued to watch her in silence, seeming to dare her to move, to cry out or to disturb the others.  Trembling overtook her, more violent this time.  She felt that those eyes were hungry for her. 

For the Fire within her. 

Sarah closed her own eyes, breathed deeply, and then opened them. 

The eyes in the night were gone. 

~ ~ ~

_Sarah did not tell the others about the shadow.  She should have done, perhaps, but something held her tongue.  Some vague sense, some trace of that feeling of being prey watched by a predator.  If she spoke of it, treated it as more than a nightmare, it would come true, and that shadow would rise up out of the dark on the following night and consume them all._ 

_"_ _There are secrets in the Grassland Plains."_ 

_She jumped in her saddle.  The words were Ossen's._ 

_"_ _Are you okay, Sarah?"_ 

_"_ _Yes.  Yes, I'm ... fine, Ossen."_ 

_"_ _Good.  As I was saying, there are secrets in the Grassland Plains.  This is a place of bandits, thieves, and old ruins.  We must try to be secrets ourselves as we cross it.  We must become ghosts in the night."_ 

_Did he know?  Had he been awake when the shadow had come?  No,_ _she thought,_ _he couldn't have been.  I heard him snoring._ 

_They rode on at a steady pace for five days, camping at night, using the warm bodies of their steeds as shelter against the winds of the plains.  They encountered nothing and no-one in this time.  For almost a week, there was nothing to see but the steadily undulating grassy plains and sparse brush, marked only by animal tracks and the ruts left behind by passing trader wagons.  To not be under cover or in enclosed space for so long, made Sarah feel strangely exposed.  She found herself looking over her shoulder, peering into the distance, hoping for a break in the monotony—as much as she feared the trouble it might bring down on their heads._ 

_"_ _Has it always been this way, Ossen?"_ 

_"_ _No, Sarah.  No.  These plains are where the Three Kingdoms used to stand before their people were driven over the Northway Mountains by the wars with the Fallen.  It was the Three Kingdoms, as they were of old, who drove the Molloi and their Iron Gods back into the Mountains of Mourning.  They were great then, the Kingdoms; now, they are so small and petty and riven by bitter politicking.  They argue even over whether the Fallen One should be fought.  Fools!"  Ossen grumbled in his throat, muttering, and then went on. " We will come to the town of Trepolpen by evening.  We will rest there tonight and gather supplies tomorrow.  We must set out for the Mountains of Mourning thereafter."_ 

_Sarah felt a chill, and she saw the Sworn stiffen._ 

_"_ _If there were another path to the Fellhorn, I would take it, believe me, but there is none.  We go on to the mountains."_ 

_There was a slight tremor in his voice that made Sarah feel no easier about what lay ahead._ 

~ ~ ~

#  _Chapter Fifteen_

A saying was carved into the blonde ash arch over Trepolpen's fortified gate. 

By Trepolpen shall ye know us,

By water, land and homestead free,

And by us shall thee know the Pathway onwards,

And thus shall we know thee. 

The town stood on a hill, overlooking the broad expanse of the Sybylyn Lake.  The town was a simple place, as with many of the homesteads, outposts, and villages that dotted the trade routes, cracked highways, and mud paths of the Grassland Plains.  It had been standing for more than a generation or two now, and some said that if it stayed in place longer then the Grassland Plains could start to become something more than an expansive crossroads for the fiefdoms of the world.  But this was only speculation and gossip, the idle kind.  For now, it was enough that Trepolpen stood there upon the shores of the Sybylyn, and that Sarah, Ossen, and the Sworn would find shelter there. 

~ ~ ~

The air over Trepolpen tore open as they approached.  Whooshes, bangs and thunder-cracks shattered the silence.  Colours and light.  Furious sound and blinding brilliance.  Sarah's moment of fright melted into a smile—the first she'd had in some time. 

Fireworks! 

Fountains sprayed out scatterings of rainbow.  Screaming darts of gold, silver and bronze.  Flashes flickering, dancing, and dying away.  For a short time, deepest night became brightest day, and Sarah was as happy as could be. 

"They're beautiful," she said. 

"Yes," agreed Ossen. " I had forgotten it was the Eve of D'nai.  Come along, there are festivities ahead, and we should join them while we can." 

"What's the Eve of D'nai, Ossen?" 

"A night when true love is meant to show its face to those who seek for it.  A few hours of warmth, light and laughter before the first day of winter comes to pass." 

Sarah followed at his steed's heels with the Sworn's horse behind.  Despite the glory and beauty of the lights overhead, Sarah noticed the Sworn's head continually turned back as they rode up the hill to Trepolpen. 

_Yes,_ she thought, _let's join the fun, as I don't think it will last for very long._ 

_They came to a tavern called_ _The Water Mark_ _and, after dismounting, passed their reins to the waiting stable boy by the door._  The bar room was packed with men, women, and children.  It was a jovial, bright space scented with sugar and spices that mingled with the aroma of wine, mead and ale, which sloshed into waiting flagons and cups.  All were absorbed in their conservations; none noticed Ossen, Sarah, and the Sworn. 

Young girls, just coming of age, passed from table to table.  Blackwort, feather's last kiss, bloodberry and witch's nose were woven into their hair.  It was supposed that a girl could meet her soulmate during the festival of D'nai by wearing such herbs and flowers to attract him and repel those whose intentions were not true. 

_The three of them were given a room to share by the innkeeper, Master Jez.  A slim man with a shaven head and the firm manner of an ex-soldier.  Sarah and Ossen would sleep together in the bed, and the Sworn would take the watch.  They needed to gather supplies from the stallholders, merchants, and traders the following day before setting out for the mountains._ 

_"_ _There will be no hunting in the steppes as we cross them, and if we are forced inside the mountains, the going will be much, much worse.  We must be prepared for the worst, for it may well come," Ossen said._ 

_But that can all wait for the morrow,_ _thought Sarah, as she joined the people of Trepolpen to watch the fireworks blossom in the night sky.  Dragons fought there.  The forms of angels and demons were traced out amid the stars.  And she was sure she saw faces from back home, in Okeechobee, Mom, Kiley_ _...Dad..._ _shimmer brilliantly for a short while and then fade away._ 

~ ~ ~

_The following day passed without incident, although Sarah was still uneasy around the Sworn.  The warrior never spoke, except with gestures.  The steel-grey eyes were young, Sarah knew, but she couldn't decide if they were male or female.  What she did know was that such a hard, silent person was difficult to be around.  It made her feel tight inside, as if her skin was tensing whenever the Sworn moved or motioned as they walked through the town or picked supplies from the market stalls.  The people of Trepolpen also seemed ill-at-ease with the black-swathed figure passing snake-like along their streets.  But Ossen maintained they needed the Sworn, and Sarah could not disagree.  The Sworn was the only trained warrior of the three of them, and they would need someone who could fight on the journey._ 

_Yes, she was sure that they would have need of the Sworn very soon._ 

_Evening was setting in when they returned to_ _The Water Mark_ _, footsore but ready to depart the town on the morrow.  After enjoying a hearty dinner with Master Jez, they retired to bed._ 

~ ~ ~

_It grew dark outside, and quiet inside, as Master Jez made for the inn's door to lock up for the night.  He reached up to secure the bolts.  The rattling rain outside had come on at nightfall, but seemed to be falling harder and more persistently now than before.  Jez felt suddenly cold down to his bones and could not catch his breath.  The cold spread through his limbs until his hands spasmed and refused to do as he wanted._ 

_Then, looking down, he saw the smoking blade that had pierced the wood of the door._ 

_He sprang away from the door as the blade swept from side to side, carving through the wood as if it were paper.  Shattered, smouldering pieces fell all about him as the five Shades strode into the bar._ 

_Master Jez met them with steel of his own._ 

_A swordsman of Highmount in the war against the Far Isles, not so many years ago, he skilfully feinted, countered and struck as the five blades that had been smelted in Nightland Forges sang and wailed around him.  Tables were overturned.  Chairs and stools were kicked over or flung at the wraiths.  Soon, Master Jez was panting and red-faced with exertion.  The Fallen-born were slowly manoeuvring themselves closer to the stairs that led to the first floor and the bedrooms above.  Despite his ailing strength, Master Jez leapt onto the bar and ran its length, knocking flagons and ale mugs towards the Fallen-born.  He jumped from the end of the bar to the foot of the stairs, where he continued the fight and shouted up the stairs,_ _"Ossen!  Awake, Wayfarer.  Get up and flee the town.  Now, for the Mother's love.  Go!"_ 

_Turning his face back to the Shades, he saw an opening and swung his sword into it, hoping to take at least one of the fiends down so Ossen and his charges could escape.  But something happened that he did not expect._ 

_The blade struck the shadowy form, which then seemed to fill out and harden as he watched.  Armour, angular and studded, sprang forth from the darkness.  The iron it was fashioned from smoked and reeked like the Fallen-born swords.  And he saw their faces, wasted and rank, with fangs that were also plated with the same blackened, ever-burning iron._ 

_And then, there were the eyes._ 

_The Devil-eyes of the Fallen-born—coals cast from a benighted forge, where screams and suffering were the sparks of creation.  Master Jez could not move for looking into them, and his blade was now fused with the plate-armoured chest of one of their number.  Black blades rose into the air, ready to strike the deathblow._ 

_There was a blur, a shout, and something passing fast struck the swords away from their downward arc.  The Fallen-born keened in fury, and Master Jez shook his head and found his scattered senses again.  Looking up, he saw a lithe figure standing on the bar, all in black, a short sword in each hand._ 

_The Sworn._ 

_Their interest in him gone, the Shades charged at the bar and brought all of their swords down upon the wood with a mighty crash of cleaving steel and splintering timber.  The Sworn was already away from them, leaving them struggling to free their weapons from the collapsed bar.  The Sworn danced nimbly on tiptoe over to Master Jez, flinging a small bundle towards him.  He caught it with one hand and gasped from the sudden weight.  A heavy purse—gold, plenty of it, no doubt.  The Sworn favoured him with a sly wink and then was out of the broken door.  Moments later, with unearthly shrieks emanating from their beings, the Shades were on their feet, swords freed, and were quickly shifting back into their incorporeal shadow forms.  They streamed out of the doorway like foul black smoke and were soon lost in the night, in pursuit of their quarry.  Master Jez lay down his sword.  Still panting, he tossed the purse of gold from hand to hand.  It was enough to repair the inn, and then some.  It would go a long way in these dark times._ 

_"_ _Thank you, my friends," he said. " And the Mother speed you safe to your destination, wherever it may be."_ 

~ ~ ~

_Ossen whipped the reins hard upon his mount and the horse gathered pace, breaking from a trot to a canter to a gallop.  Sarah and the Sworn followed hot upon his tail.  The tree branches and glimpses of the night sky overhead all became a cold blur, seething past.  Sarah did not speak, and neither did Ossen, until they were well clear of Trepolpen.  Only then did Sarah see the Wayfarer glance back for a moment.  His face tightened, as if he had heard a terrible sound, and then he stared across the undulating landscape before them and on to the horizon, made jagged by the peaks of mountains._ 

_"_ _There are the Mountains of Mourning, Sarah," he said. " We must ride on hard to reach them.  Those Fallen-born came with Fellhounds, and they may have Drujja seeking us too.  Ride on, both of you!"_ 

_The company of three rode hard and long into the night until the first pale streaks of dawn lined the horizon.  It was only then that they slowed to a canter.  The steeds' flanks glistened with sweat, their eyes were wide and wild, and their bits were crusted with spittle and foam.  But still the howl of things that were rank and fallen from grace came from not so far away._ 

~ ~ ~

#  _Chapter Sixteen_

The river they came to the following day was a shimmering green serpent parting the hillocks of the Grassland Plains.  The ground was becoming stonier as they drew closer to the Mountains of Mourning, but there were still days to go before they would be in their shadow.  The hillsides slithered with old roots, storm-churned mud, and unnamed ruins.  A pillar, weather-worn and lost to the structure it had once come from, had fallen across the surging water's surface.  Along the banks bloomed flowers by the hundred, their white, pancake-shaped petals mottled with patches of pink, magenta, and rose.  Some were darker in hue, as if the virgin blossoms had been daubed with blood.  Sarah wondered if it were just her imagination working overtime. 

_Too many late nights and too little sound sleep_ , she thought.  A slight perfume issued from the flowers, heady and piquant.  She felt Ossen's fingers dig hard into her shoulder. _ It's not safe here._  She knew it without needing to be told.  Looking back at the flowers, she saw only spilled blood, for sure, on the mottled blooms—the dried-out spots of life left by others who had come here before them.  Something awful had happened in this place. 

"You see that?"  Ossen whispered, pointing at the pillar over the river. 

She nodded. " It's out of place.  Someone's put that there.  It's a trap." 

"An ambush, most likely.  And they're watching us right now from the ruins." 

"Who?" 

"Bandits.  Waiting in the brush and ruins." 

"I can't see anyone.  Nothing." 

"They'll have bolt-holes dug out.  These parts of the plains are like rabbit warrens because of them." 

Sarah looked to the Sworn, who nodded in agreement with the Wayfarer's words. 

"What do we do?" 

Ossen breathed out through his moustache and scratched at his beard. " There is only one thing we can do," he said. 

The Wayfarer dismounted from his stallion and walked out onto the pillar that had fallen over the river.  He held up his hands, his staff between them, and called into the scattered ruins beyond, "I am of the Wayfarers.  We seek safe passage through your lands.  We come in peace and have no allegiance.  We mean no harm to the Kay'lo." 

A reverberating shriek answered, echoing through the shattered stone walls and crumbling spaces all around.  Dark shapes sprang up, moving and darting, closer and closer.  Ossen stepped away from the pillar and mounted his stallion once more. 

"That didn't work, did it?" 

He shook his head with a sigh. " No.  O Sworn, we will need you." 

The Sworn nodded and dismounted, drawing its short swords, eyes flicking this way and that as grass rustled and voices drifted lightly on the wind. 

Then, the Kay'lo came, sprinting and jumping out of the ruins with knives and whips in their hands.  Clad in light leather and woven cloth, their delicate amber-toned faces made them appear furious and feline.  Black hair streamed behind them as their cries rose to shrieks and their eyes narrowed to slits.  Their movements were snake-like, just like the Sworn.  The black-clad warrior was a blur around the horses as it fenced and fought with the attackers.  Sarah could see that they were as lithe and nimble as the black ghost they were facing.  She tried to feel the Flame inside her, to bring it out and send it against the Kay'lo, just as she had the Drujja, but nothing happened.  She drew Fang from its small scabbard to stab, strike, and cut at Kay'lo hands that grabbed her ankles, trying to unmount her.  Ossen flailed and battered at the surging tide of bandits with his staff.  More and more of them seemed to stream out from the ground, the mouths of hidden burrows disgorging them.  There were too many, far too many.  The Sworn was lost to sight among them.  She saw Ossen go down into the melee with a cry. 

Then she, too, fell. 

~ ~ ~

"Where are they taking us?  Where is the Sworn?"  Sarah asked. 

"I don't know, Sarah," said Ossen, "but I fear we shall find out soon enough." 

They were walking between Kay'lo bandits, their horses being led along separately. _ If they had let us stay mounted, we might have had a chance,_ Sarah thought. 

But she could see that these people were smarter than that.  This was their way of life; she could see it in the hard lines and unfeeling stares of their faces.  This was not crime to them.  It was how they survived in the Plains.  Every few steps, a prod in the back with a pole-arm would make her stumble along a little faster.  They were being taken to a camp, Ossen said, after which they might be taken to Lo'a'Pan: the underground city of the Kay'lo.  A shudder went through Sarah as she thought back on the time she had spent as a prisoner in Yagga's hut.  To go through that again. 

_No,_ she thought. _ I will not.  I'll burn them all to ashes before I let them do that to me._ 

Ossen had said, "Take what they give you until you are at the edge, and then do whatever, say whatever, lie through your teeth.  Do whatever you need to do to survive, Sarah.  It is the only way we will live through this." 

Sarah could feel herself starting to shake. 

"Not again, Ossen.  Not like Yagga.  I can't do it.  I can't." 

"You have to.  We both have to." 

"But what will happen to us?" 

"I don't know.  I'm sorry, Sarah.  I don't know." 

Sarah nodded. 

They marched on without another word. 

~ ~ ~

The Kay'lo encampment was small and sad-looking.  Bowl-shaped fire pits had been dug into the ground and revealed the ashes and bones of old meals—at least that was what Sarah hoped they were from.  The people who sat around the bivouacs, hammocks and huts, were malarial puppets.  Yellow skin hung over wrinkled bones.  No mercenary fervour lit up their eyes when Sarah and Ossen were marched in; only a tired resignation, like candle flames eating their way down to the root of the wick, like lights about to go out. 

"The blight," said Ossen, "even here.  It is spreading out to touch all of Seythe; its people as well." 

On the trees and bivouac supports, scraps of paper hung like limp leaves.  On each scrap, Sarah could make out delicate, flowing inscriptions.  The inscriptions themselves formed the borders and underlines of charcoal drawings—lean, lonesome faces; mottled snowdrop flowers from the riverbanks; pole-arms and spears laid out at the ready; the death-masks of men, women, and children. 

In one of the open house structures, a group of Kay'lo sat cross-legged around a ferret-faced man with a small, chipped harp.  Despite its condition, he steadily tuned it, plucking its strings lightly, and then began to play.  The acoustic melodies were eerie to Sarah's ears.  Strange, echoing chords shaped the air and seemed to stir it, creating a chilly breeze that crept over her and made her heart catch. 

A thin, elderly woman with a noble, unlined face approached them, nodding a greeting.  Speaking quickly, she said, "My name is M'Eoa.  You are our guests.  Please sit with me and eat a little." 

"You speak the southern tongue well," said Ossen. 

"Yes.  Before the last war, I was a student in Yrsyllor.  I learned a great deal about the Three Kingdoms.  It is sad that they have learned so little about those of us who live in the Plains.  Come, sit with me, please." 

Ossen and Sarah followed the woman, the points of pole-arms still in their backs, until they reached the largest bivouac.  It was an open house with no walls, only flooring and a camouflaged net roof held in place by supports. 

"What do you think is going on?"  Sarah whispered. 

"Interrogation.  Soft then hard, by the looks of things.  Play along.  Tread carefully." 

Sat on simple stools, Ossen and Sarah were handed chipped finger cups of pink tea.  The aroma was sweet and heady. 

"Please drink," said M'Eoa. 

Ossen and Sarah looked at each other.  The tea's scent was inviting, but that was the point—it smelled exactly like the flowers by the river, the ones with a scent that had almost drawn them into the Kay'lo trap. 

"Isn't there a Kay'lo saying, Mistress M'Eoa," asked Ossen, "that one should beware of bitter seeds served in the sweetest syrup?" 

Ossen emptied his cup, the tea spattering at his feet. 

Sarah did the same. 

M'Eoa smiled, but it was a slightly sad expression. " I am sorry.  It would have been better for you if you had taken the tea.  I am kinder of heart than U'Uan." 

Pole-arm hafts smashed them into oblivion. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Seventeen

Sarah came eye to eye with the Fallen One at the end of the world.  At the end of a wilderness lane, where the dirt path disintegrated into grasping green, flies murmured and buzzed around her head, disturbing the temperate summer's day.  At the end of the lane, through the broken fence, was her safe place.  Even Kiley didn't know about it, and she never took Malarkey there.  On the other side of the broken fence was the grove—a den of old trees and shimmering mudslides adorning a hillside that had been excavated for another housing project in Okeechobee. 

It was Sarah's favourite place.  She went there to be alone, away from people, to be inside herself.  She listened to the water run, watched the bugs buzz, crawl, and fly, and climbed the trees, imagining herself to be Tarzan, not Jane. 

Then, Sarah saw Him in the trees.  He was rough-shouldered and goat-hairy.  She saw Him darting and bounding through tangled grass, leaving broad hoofprints in the mud.  Wherever He trod, the earth became pregnant, sprouting colourful, lush flora .  Sarah watched from behind the crook of a tree limb, nervous about catching the eye of this thing that wore a tattered man's shirt and a tramp's pants.  The sight of Him raised a crazy heat in her.  Her brain felt funny, full of butterflies and bees.  Peering through twigs and brambles, she saw the thing looking back at her, now showing its teeth in a smile.  So close.  It snorted air from its lungs through a snout, rather than a nose.  It smelt old and ripe in the warmth of the day.  Those eyes of His were so warm, so innocent in their way.  The faun reached out to her with fingers of burnished brown leather.  A thick golden tear ran down His tanned face.  Sarah bit her lip.  Monsters can cry too, and more often than we do. 

Sarah could see the horns on the faun's head; one was chewed down to an ugly stump, and the other was loose, trailing a snarl of wire from a barbed trap.  There was a crust of blood there.  The faun was sick, growing thin, He would soon be starving. 

Unless she helped him. 

She went to the faun, running her fingers over its sallow fur.  The faun blinked, cocking its head in understanding.  Again, it smiled, and so did she. 

~ ~ ~

The _Rosara carna_ was all that the Kay'lo ever needed to use to make someone talk; other tortures took too long.  The flowers that grew by the river were evil blossoms.  Once, years ago, the Kay'lo had ignorantly dried and crushed the flowers to give the _torbo_ leaves they smoked in their pipes more flavour.  Ghosts and demons came, or so it seemed.  Grass whispered, cursed, and muttered to them at night.  Everything reeked of death.  Foul, starving faces formed in the waters of the river, and dead, worm-skinned bodies dragged themselves from the ground where they had fallen long ago.  Some of the Kay'lo drowned themselves in the river, and others hung themselves before they realised what had happened.  The _Rosara carna_ sowed their seeds behind the eyes, from where horrors would then blossom without end.  Word came down from Lo'a'Pan that no Kay'lo was to ever smoke the _Rosara carna_. 

But the same was not said about prisoners. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah was back in the grove.  She could smell rot setting in, as deep and as dark as the roots of the trees, mildew and mould giving way to canker and carcass.  White, livid spots spread across tree bark.  She could see that the stuff seemed to bubble.  Breathing the air of the grove made her feel queasy and light-headed.  She soon found the faun.  He was sicker than before, nearer to death.  His fur fell away in ragged clumps.  His eyes were no longer warm, and wept yellow tears rather than golden ones.  Slime dribbled over his blistering lips.  His tongue flickered out on occasion to lick away the fluid, only for it to catch in his throat.  His teeth were gone. 

Sarah went from the faun to the brook, and from the brook to the faun, cupping water in her hands and feeding it to the ailing creature, hoping it would help.  The faun's tongue scraped skin from her fingers and palms, but Sarah didn't wince or cry out. 

The faun's pain was more than hers could ever be. 

She sat by his side, stroking his flanks and spine where bone was showing.  His skin was losing its sun-baked lustre, taking on the hue of the death.  Sarah knew that she could do nothing for the faun.  Telling Momma would do no good.  Telling the cops or teachers would do even less.  There were places for kids who told stories about the strange things they saw in the world. 

No, she wasn't going to go to one of those places. 

So she stayed by the faun's side until it got dark and the only sound was its laboured breathing. 

~ ~ ~

U'Uan watched the old man and the girl being made to kneel over the smoking bowls.  They were kneeling inside an enlarged chimney cut into the side of one of the trenches that led to the encampment's bolt-holes and tunnels.  In the covered chamber, the packed earth absorbed the smoke.  It was large enough for two people, both crouched and hunched.  Even if they tried not to inhale the fumes from the bowls, the nature of the chamber meant they could not draw breath without taking in lungfuls of the sickly sweet perfume.  U'Uan had tied a cloth mask over his face to protect himself, but the pungency still made his eyes run.  Despite the smarting, he stayed at his post, standing guard over the captives.  As well as doing his duty, he was doing this because he was curious.  He wanted to see what nightmares they would have before they talked. 

Southerners never came this far west anymore. 

They would confess their purpose soon enough. 

~ ~ ~

The grove was grey and dark now, twisted grim with vines and stringy tangles of growth that hung in black knots from branches.  Everything looked like it was being worn away into shadow.  Patches of colour burst here and there, but all faded into shades of grey.  Sarah took care not to tread in the spreading, shimmering darkness as she crept through, searching for the faun.  The sucking mud was littered with broken bottles and tattered Coke cans.  A path led her to the brook itself, which was scummy and soiled with oil-black stains. 

There was nothing good in it left to drink. 

Sarah crept on through the snarls of leafless brush, taking scratches that could have been bites from broken branches.  The air was not good.  Maybe she could help the faun escape, if it wasn't dead. 

A tightness clutched at her insides. 

No.  He can't be dead. 

She hurried on through the dark. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah's eyes were streaming.  She could hear Ossen hacking in his throat.  The pungent fumes from the ashes were scalding.  She could feel the burning in her nasal passages, throat, and the lining of her lungs.  Her head hummed with burnt perfume, and the taste in her mouth was a tepid, bitter rosewater.  She tried to spit, but her mouth was too dry.  A headache clustered beneath her temples.  Sickly stars crawled across her eyes, stretching and moving like underwater tentacles.  Her stomach was an aching web of hunger, trapping only smoke that had gone down the wrong way.  Everything blurred into charcoal smears, and then was gone. 

~ ~ ~

The faun was not dead, but he was different: naked of hair and fur and as pale as the long-dead.  He was lying on his side, on the ground.  Everything about him was shrunken and puckered.  The sockets of his horns were flaking holes in his head.  His thin skin, too tight in places, had torn open and bled.  His fingernails and hooves were the colour of cockroaches. 

But worst of all were his eyes.  Dull and black.  Bright and terrible.  So alive, and yet so dead.  And they were drawing Sarah closer.  Step after step.  But Sarah still cared, still loved.  She still wanted to help.  She let it draw her close.  She reached out her hand, as it once had to her. 

But the thing that was once a faun made a sound in its throat, one she had heard before in the Norn Valleys—feral, high, and vile.  Her eyes flashed wide with understanding.  She snatched back her hand.  Turned to run.  Moving in slow motion.  Too slow.  The faun was upon her.  Blood, like a red rain, began steadily falling. 

"I take your life again, O Flame.  I win.  Always, I win." 

~ ~ ~

"I think they have had enough, U'Uan.  Get them out of there.  Now." 

U'Uan mumbled something inaudible and disrespectful through his cloth mask. 

"U'Uan, you will do as I say." 

"I take my orders from true Kay'lo, M'Eoa.  You are only here as a courtesy." 

"U'Uan, this is not the time to fight.  Their noise may endanger us.  You know what is out there in the Plains." 

U'Uan looked into M'Eoa's eyes.  His pole-arm twitched involuntarily in his hand, his body reacting without thought.  The lines around his dark eyes creased. 

Then he did as he was told. 

~ ~ ~

M'Eoa entered the Sick Hut, a simple rectangular structure with sheet hangings, rather than walls, to maintain privacy.  She glanced at Ossen and Sarah.  They were staring into space.  H'Aoa was busy caring for the comatose prisoners. 

"U'Uan should have killed them.  They are taking up too much of our supplies.  We cannot afford to be wasting this much rice." 

"You do not wish to learn their story, H'Aoa?"  M'Eoa admonished her. 

"What do you mean, M'Eoa?" 

"Have you not listened to them?  In their sleep, they talk of the Fallen One and the blight—this sickness that stains us all." 

"So?  That is how the _Rosara carna_ affects everyone: madness and dark dreams." 

"You remember the stories of the Fallen One, don't you, H'Aoa?" 

"Perhaps.  You listened to too many romances when you were in Yrsyllor, M'Eoa.  If you had grown up in Lo'a'Pan, such rubbish would have been purged from your mind.  You would not be concerned about what sick people say in their sleep." 

"Don't lecture me, H'Aoa.  Your devotion doesn't impress me.  I have suffered the same as you.  We all have.  I come from a rich family who sent me south to study in my youth.  That is true.  But since then, I have given up everything from that life.  I am Kay'lo.  The same blood as you." 

Without pause, M'Eoa unbuttoned her linen top and showed H'Aoa the puckered marks on her skin, the dried blisters studded with white, doughy scars.  H'Aoa did not blink or turn away. 

"You do not impress me with your war wounds, M'Eoa.  Privilege is privilege.  You can burn and beat a woman, but if she is raised a romantic, a romantic she will stay to the end of her days." 

"You are a hard woman, H'Aoa.  What have you done to become so?" 

"Perhaps terrible things were done to me also.  Only I do not speak of them or parade them like badges for all to see, as you do." 

"Maybe so.  All the same, what you say is sad to hear." 

"It is nothing," H'Aoa said. " Life is merely the absence of death.  I intend to endure it right through to the end.  That is all.  That is the way of the Kay'lo." 

M'Eoa leaned over to the younger woman, resting her hand on her shoulder, about to reply when, in the distance, there came a sound.  Low and insistent.  Rhythmic and steady.  The rumbling of an underground storm.  A stampede closing in. 

"They are coming," said M'Eoa. 

Trembles ran through the undergrowth, rushing like the waves swept up by an oncoming tidal wave.  The air droned all around, and angry tones burrowed into tired bones and aching eyes. 

"We must go," M'Eoa told U'uan when she found him. " They will leave none alive who stay here." 

They peered deep into the trees, hoping and fearing for a glimpse of what was coming. 

Then, there they were. 

" _Dionin..._ " whispered U'uan. 

~ ~ ~

There was no time to flee. 

Dionin poured into the camp, and with them the sensation of drowning, being trapped, weighed down on the bed of a grim, growling sea.  Everything shuddered.  Splintered.  Shattered.  Fell apart.  Gravity twisted loose as they struggled free from the ground.  A hundred sinuous forms seethed out and surged over the Kay'lo—all running, shouting and screaming.  All flailing their arms as they were overrun by grey and grotesque worms of the earth.  The Dionin had human faces but their teeth were razors and their eyes were orbs of ebony glass.  Their hair was long, greasy, and lank, but their faces ... so _human_. 

Kay'lo fell from the trees.  Dionin shook them like dogs savaging torn dolls; then they hurled them away, hard and far.  The open houses of the encampment collapsed, their frames splitting as the soil they stood in separated.  Cracks opened up in the ground.  Trench walls wept, disintegrating over the shaking people who cowered within them.  On hands and knees, those who could still move, chased each other into the crumbling entrances of bolt-holes, only to scream in horror as the Dionin burrowed in after them.  They would leave nothing on, or under, the ground alive. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah blinked and rubbed her eyes.  Then, with a cry, she snatched at the branches of the tree she clung to and looked around, breathing hard. 

"How did I get up here?" 

A sound came from behind her.  She turned her head.  It was Ossen, still unconscious, and the Sworn was crouching over him. 

"You saved us from those ... things." 

The Sworn nodded and turned back to Ossen. 

"But how?" 

The Sworn said nothing, continuing to minister to Ossen.  Sarah turned her eyes to what was happening below.  The ground seemed to flow and churn, like billowing clouds in the sky.  Earth burst open here.  Soil scattered there.  Teeth ground through the screaming Kay'lo.  All of them were dying. 

All because of me...

Sarah shook the thought away; it was silly—plain ridiculous.  But those things looked like they could have something to do with the Fallen-born. 

Long hours passed in the tree, and twilight began to darken the world.  Sarah was sure she had dozed off a couple of times, despite her precarious position.  A hand fell on her shoulder at last. 

It was Ossen. 

"You're awake." 

"Yes." 

"Are you okay?" 

"No." 

"Those flowers—"

"Later, Sarah.  For now, let us get down from here and move on.  The Dionin will only stay in the bolt-holes, feasting on the dead, for so long.  Come on, both of you." 

They climbed down from the tree, and Sarah gasped at the final desolation of the encampment.  It was not the same as watching it from on high, being down here among the dead.  Matchsticks and mangled tree stumps jutted like broken bones from the grievous injuries made in the earth. 

Ossen grabbed her arm roughly. " Come, Sarah, and you, O Sworn.  This is no time to mourn those who might have killed us." 

The Kay'lo were bad guys. 

Bang _-dead!_ 

As they hurried through trees and undergrowth and out onto the open ground, Sarah looked at Ossen.  He was stiffer in his posture and manner than before.  His eyes flickered like shards of flint. _ What had happened to him?_  she wondered. _ When he breathed in the fumes from those bowls, what personal horrors did he see?  It must have been something that had hurt him and made him stop caring for the dead, even when they were Kay'lo._  A shudder passed through her at the thought, at how he might be if the nightmare he had seen remained with him, if it poisoned him irrevocably. 

If it put out the Flame. 

Bang _-dead_! 

~ ~ ~

Rain fell as they slogged on, soaking them to the skin.  Days passed among the hills and scattered trees.  Sarah couldn't remember the last time she'd been dry, never mind clean, or the last time a footstep had not squelched.  She felt sick and queasy inside as she sank her feet into yet more slurry.  Miles upon miles of drenched grimness seemed to stretch ahead and behind them.  Sarah looked at Ossen.  Just a glimpse said all he was feeling.  Whatever they had breathed in at the Kay'lo camp was still stewing inside his brain.  She could feel it without asking him, because it was still touching on her senses too, creating strange flares of colour, dancing opalescent lights and helter-skelters that wound away into off-white spirals.  The world looked like the one she had known, but there were shades of difference to it now.  Textures felt simultaneously grittier and softer, more dissolute.  The rain sometimes felt like she was passing through melting layers of wax and plastic.  Light shone dimly, dissipating oddly; it was as if she could hear it as whispers that rustled away into depths.  Depths that were drawing them in, drawing them on, leading them deeper and further away. 

On towards the Mountains of Mourning. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Eighteen

They soon came to an empty village.  Each of the huts was a collapsing skeleton of boards and hole-riddled timber.  The edges of the holes bore the marks of teeth. 

"More of the Dionin's work," muttered Ossen. 

"Ossen," Sarah said, "you said we might have been responsible for what happened at the camp...?" 

"We might have been.  The Dionin are creations of the Fallen One, and doubtless he has them seeking us as much as his Fallen-born." 

Sarah took a hard breath and then asked, "Seeking _us_ or seeking _me_?" 

Ossen turned his eyes upon her, and she saw the hardness that had marked them since the attack in the camp dissolve a little.  A shadow of his old warmth returned. " I am sorry, Sarah.  I see you are beginning to understand." 

"Why do they have to hound me and kill people because of me? _ Why?_ " 

"Because you carry the Flame.  The Fallen One will do whatever He must to extinguish it and kill you.  Even now, I think, He watches us from the Shadowhorn.  He knows where we are bound, and He means to ensure that you die before you reach its foothills." 

The rain fell harder—it would pour down later—and the wind keened, making their teeth chatter.  There would be no more walking that night. 

"But we must rest here before we go on.  I will take the first watch."  The Sworn's hand rested on Ossen's shoulder, fingers digging in hard. 

"Very well, O Sworn.  You may take the watch rather than myself." 

The Sworn relaxed its grip. 

Ossen led them into one of the huts.  Its roofing was still in one piece, and it was dark, musty, and draughty inside, but dry.  They squeezed water out of their clothes as best they could.  The grey light that streamed in through the windows did no more to disturb the darkness inside than a single small candle might illuminate the void of outer space.  A bed in a weak-looking frame squatted close to the ground.  The hollows made by those who once slept there showed as mould in the decaying mattress.  The stove was broken, and the dwelling looked ready to collapse in on itself at any time. 

It was not easy to sleep.  The killings had happened not so long ago, and they had left a taint in the air, a slight taste that kept Sarah awake.  She felt as if she would die from suffocation if she lay down to sleep there; that the night's dark matter might crawl inside and fill her heart.  She got to her feet and went over to Ossen.  He was on second watch, staring off into space.  The fire he lit had dwindled until only ashes and embers remained.  The Sworn slept, a dark mound not far from the shrinking circle of light.  The Wayfarer and Sarah sat together, and he wrapped her in the excess of his voluminous robes.  Their eyes wandered with the drifting paths of smoke tendrils and the dying dance of embers. 

"Why do we live in such dark times, Ossen?" 

"Because the will of men has worked upon the World and made it so.  But past times were not so much better, and let no-one tell you otherwise.  There have been darker ages than this, wholly because those who lived in them thought, without question, that they served reason, purity, and light.  In fact, they were ferocious fools who wandered from the Path into madness, sterility, and darkness.  The Light and the Dark are One, Sarah, in truth.  Neither is _other_ and to be feared.  Neither must be damned and burned away from our lives.  Without the light, we are lost, but without the darkness, how would we know there is beauty in the arctic shine of that steadfast north star?" 

"Your words make me feel better, Ossen." 

"My words are a part of life and of the Flame.  They are not my own.  No more than your words are your own.  They, like the Flame, have been since the dawn of time and will be until all things are extinct and the world grows dark and cold." 

"The Flame ... I feel it but only sometimes.  What does it mean for me, having the Flame inside?" 

"It means there is a better chance you will ascend the Fellhorn alive, rather than fall dead upon the Path." 

Sarah was silent for a moment, thinking. " Do you know what the Flame is, Ossen?" 

"The Old Words say that, at the border between the Dark and the Light, there is a Flame and it burns Eternal." 

"And what is the Fallen One?" 

"There is a rot, a blackness that flows through existence, moving, changing, eating, decaying." 

"This rot, this blackness, that's where it comes from?" 

"No, rot and decay are as natural as birth and life.  Remember what I said about how Light and the Dark are one?  The Fallen One is that rot and decay out of its place, taken out of time.  He is a shadow that should not be—the Darkness That Is Not Darkness—as are all who serve Him and the fell beings created by Him." 

"What does all that mean?" 

"It means that the shadows cast by twilight are as much a danger as the shadows that live in the hearts of men and women.  The Fallen One and His spawn can be in all of them, watching and waiting." 

As he spoke the last words, Ossen saw that Sarah was asleep beside him.  He rested an arm around her until morning, not bothering to wake her for the third watch. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah awoke to light and to cleared skies.  The rain and storms had passed, stripping some of the gloom from the abandoned village.  Outside, she saw Ossen walking alone, his footsteps steady as he passed from house to house, stopping to turn and nod at the doorway of each one before moving on to the next.  Sarah watched him make a circuit of the village to perform this peculiar ritual. 

When he came back, she asked, "What were you doing out there?" 

"Making peace with the spirits of the dead.  It is good for them to know that the living remember them and wish them well, since they died the way they did." 

"You spoke to them?" 

"After a fashion.  Mostly, I listened.  They told me of the things in the world that they will miss.  The smell of wet wood burning.  The first frost of a winter morning breaking underfoot.  Words spoken by men and women who know how to speak them well.  Silence settling about the room after one has made love.  A woman's heartbeat.  A man's contented sigh.  All of the things we are asleep to until we are taken by death." 

Through the hut doorway, Sarah watched drops of rain fall from the edge of the roof.  Each drop was scintillating—a shining diamond—so many little crystals bursting and dissolving against the old, beaten wood and the ground. 

A hundred heartbeats.  A thousand tears. 

Sarah could feel her stomach rumbling, and then, out of the brush, she saw the Sworn coming towards them carrying a brace of hares. 

"Ah, breakfast is served," said Ossen with a smile. 

Sarah thought it was the first true one she had seen him make since they had escaped the Kay'lo encampment. 

~ ~ ~

Later, with bellies full of lean, savoury meat, the three companions walked out of the village and on to where Ossen said there was an old boat house. 

"I wasn't just exchanging pleasantries with the spirits, you know," he said. " We are out of our way and need to make up time as quickly as we can.  Better that we travel by water than by land, now that we are without horses." 

~ ~ ~

The river was waiting for them.  Long grass rustled, keening a little in the breeze, which carried traces of salt.  Birds called, high and low, and resembled scraps of dirty cloth falling and fluttering in the sky.  Fishing boats were ahead, under cover in a shed, hidden from sight by leaves and flora.  They approached until they heard something snap in the shadow of the boatshed, a deliberate footstep.  Then another and another, and then dark figures stepped out into the open. 

The Fallen-born had found them. 

Their eyes were freezing cold yet burning bright pits of ice and nothingness, which danced with raw, naked flames.  Ossen walked past Sarah, moving so quickly that her grasping hand missed him.  She could see him concentrating upon his progress towards the Fallen-born, making himself appear sure and steady before them. 

"Go back whence you came, Fellspawn.  Back to your Master and His tomb beneath the Shadowhorn," said Ossen. 

The Fallen-born spoke as one, "We shall do no such thing, Ossen One-Eye." 

"Is that the extent of your strength these days?  An insult worthy of a spoilt child?" 

"Have a care, One-Eye," they hissed, advancing, their mottled swords scraping from ancient scabbards. " You shall kneel at His feet before He is done with you." 

"I think not, Devil-eyes." 

The hissing rose in pitch, the creatures taking the insult as well as Ossen had taken to being called One-Eye.  Sarah and the Sworn watched as the Fallen-born closed in on them, constantly shifting, moving across the space between them whenever their eyes blinked or looked away.  Sarah could feel the Sworn tensing, ready to fight.  She drew Fang from its short scabbard at her waist.  Ossen seemed as still as the Shades.  His head was bowed and his fingers gripped his staff.  Sarah was sure she could hear him muttering under his breath.  The Fallen-born moved like black snakes slithering softly through the high, dry grass.  When she turned to face one, it would move into the periphery of her vision, forcing her to keep moving.  She could see that the Sworn was doing the same in order to keep them in sight. 

"Take your eyes off them and you're dead." 

Sarah's heart jumped; the Sworn had spoken.  And she knew that voice.  She had heard it once before.  But there was no time for that now.  The Fallen-born continued their circling dance of shadows, keeping Sarah and the Sworn moving.  Sarah felt her head swim and her eyes ache.  A dizziness washed over her.  This was a game to them.  They were tiring them out.  And why was Ossen just standing there like that? 

"Why isn't he helping?" 

"One-Eye abandons you to our care.  He knows our Master is stronger than those of Wayfarer blood," hissed the Fallen-born. 

Then Ossen turned to face them.  He threw up his arms and cried out, _"Behold the Living Flame that burns away His Shadow!"_ 

Sarah was lifted off her feet, suspended in the air, her arms flung out and her head cast back.  Surging waves of fire and light poured out of her.  Silence and bright fury that consumed all in its path—and the Fallen-born were what lay in its path this time.  The Five.  She could not see them, but she heard them shrieking as the flames tore through them and wore them away into nothing, just as the sun's light banishes the night upon a spring morning.  In mere moments, it was over, though it felt like she had spent an eternity there, hanging in the air.  She fell to earth, shaking and drawing deep, hard breaths.  Her legs gave out from under her.  The Sworn caught her before she fell.  Through the haze in her head, Sarah saw the Sworn tear away the wrappings from its face to glare at Ossen. " You should not have done that, Ossen.  You could have killed her." 

"The Fallen-born would have killed all of us, and where would we be then—all lying dead or worse, with our souls bound by agony until they could take us to Him?" 

"You go too far. _ Never_ do that again.  Not until she knows and understands the Flame fully." 

"You are a fine one to talk.  You think I did not guess how you saved us from the Dionin?  No art that was not magical could have raised us up into the branches of that tree.  And you learned that art from Him!" 

The eyes in the unmasked face of the Sworn met Ossen's gaze and matched it.  Sarah had last seen that face and its dark flowing hair framed by flames, burning at the stake in the square of Highmount. 

The Sworn was Princess Jedda. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Nineteen

Jedda looked down at Sarah's shivering form.  Kneeling down by her side, she smoothed the girl's brow and prayed to the Mother as the boat made its way downriver.  The Wayfarer had cast a spell of basic sentience upon the craft, so that it steered itself along without needing someone at the helm.  The deck creaked as Ossen appeared at the gangway. 

"You could have killed her back there," Jedda reprimanded. " She is weak and wasted from the strain of letting the Flame loose in that way." 

"I know," he said. " I would not have done it if there were any other choice, but Sarah was the only one who could extinguish them temporarily and gain us time." 

"Still, it could have been the death of her, and then all of this would have been for nothing." 

"It was a risk I had to take.  What would you say your counsel with The Fallen One was?" 

The princess's eyes grew wet and she sucked in a hard breath. " It was for Venna.  I didn't know you would come for me.  Or that anyone would.  They put me on the rack.  I lived four years of my life alone in that darkness, hearing stories about Ianna and what she was doing to my sister, and knowing what she would finally do to me.  My heart grew as cold and hard as the stone in the prison walls.  There was no-one there for me, so I reached out to Him.  It was a risk I had to take." 

"There always are such risks in life, Jedda.  And always we think there should be another way, but they exist only with hindsight." 

"I thought you'd be angrier than this, Ossen.  It could be me that He has been watching and following all along." 

"Perhaps, but He has known about me and about Sarah for some time.  You, me, her—His eyes are on all three of us, even if she alone carries the Flame.  We each threaten Him.  He fears me for my knowledge of the past, and you for your knowledge of His nature." 

_With those words, he turned back to Sarah._ 

Jedda could see Sarah's struggle.  Tears gathered under her eyelids and ran down her face.  She looked outside to watch the river rolling them away from shore, the current carrying them out into the distance, into the future, towards the Mountains of Mourning.  Whatever was out there, whatever was waiting, she knew it was going to hurt them all.  This journey would change them into people they might not recognise as themselves.  Jedda hunched her shoulders.  So little sleep for so long.  So much pain and sickness in so little time.  In the dimness of the boat's interior, she felt the darkness breathing, moving to embrace her. 

" _Come...to me...O traitor-child...embrace...the Dark..."_

Sarah moaned, calling out from wherever she was. 

Then she went under again. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty

Sarah sat in the sun with her dad.  It was late September, nearly October, and the leaves were falling from the trees.  All around them, a carpet of red, gold, amber, and orange was settling in for the autumn, waiting for winter.  The sun was sinking, turning the sky to azure, to violet, and then to night.  A soft smell hung in the air, mulchy and pungent.  Age and decay.  Time was passing.  Days were growing shorter, and nights, longer.  They breathed it in and she felt it. 

She was getting older. 

School would soon be over.  Her youth would soon be gone.  Then there would be college, jobs, marriage, and children—things that slow life down, make it into something mundane.  Tonight, though, here in these woods, there was still a little magic left in the air.  Enough to light a small fire with. 

A Flame that would burn forever. 

Sarah rubbed her hands together, warming them over the fire.  Dad didn't seem to feel the cold.  He never did.  Still, that was boys for you, so Momma said.  They never got cold fingers or toes.  Sarah watched the bright buds of light that spat from the kindling.  It's not something you see every day, not with central heating being the norm, watching wood discolour, the bark curling and burning.  It was a beautiful, natural sight, so alien to her city girl eyes. 

"You all right, Moon-pie?"  asked Dad. 

"Yeah.  Just watching the fire burn, Dadda." 

She only dared call him that when they were alone together. 

"It's something, isn't it?  No gas, no electricity, just wood burning away into nothing.  Simple beauty." 

Sarah smiled at him, and he smiled back at her. 

Tomorrow, everything would change.  She was starting ninth grade—a year early too.  Nothing would be the same between them after that.  This was it, the dying hours of him as Dadda and her as his little girl. _ When the fire goes out_ , thought Sarah, _that's it._ _ No more innocence, no more games.  Everything becomes serious and something between us dies._  She sighed. 

"You sure you're all right?" 

"Yeah, I could do with a walk, though.  I'm getting a numb ass sitting here." 

Dad took her hand and helped her to her feet.  They spent a moment brushing leaves and grass off their backsides. _ The city's no cleaner than the countryside_ , Sarah thought, _but there's a difference to the dirt_. 

"Okay, which way?"  she asked. 

Dad ruffled her hair, making a show of thinking, deciding.  They were in a small oval clearing.  Their tent was a leaning black cone in the fire's leaping light.  The tall trees of the wood made her think of long fingers reaching out of the earth, surrounding them in a friendly embrace, keeping the world out, just for tonight. 

"Let's go this way," said Dad, walking off into the tree line. 

Sarah ran after him. 

In the woods, amid the trees, the darkness took a form unlike anywhere else in the world—a ripe, pregnant feeling of fullness with a void beyond in the usual conjurations of shadows.  It was a sense of forever that Sarah did not want to leave behind.  A shiver passed through her as she thought of the days ahead.  So many days of adulthood compared to the precious few of childhood.  None of the years ahead would have a place in her heart in the same way as this time, which was coming to an end.  That was the truth underlying the memories, like sepia photos burning, blotching, and crinkling in the heart of the Flame. 

She couldn't see Dad up ahead in the dark, but she could hear him.  His footfalls on the mulched leaves were not too far ahead.  The trees were close, pressing in like rank and file, their branches and bows raised in stiff salutes.  Boles shimmered with lichen.  She could no longer see the stars overhead through the canopy of leaves.  The footfalls ahead were moving, weaving, left to right, right to left.  Sarah slowed, turning her head, listening, tuning in on Dad. 

"Dadda, slow down.  You're going too fast for me." 

Either he didn't hear her, or he didn't care. 

That thought stung, made her heart hurt. 

She was running through the cold, wet woods now, breathing the soggy air.  There was no light to guide her.  Suddenly, all warmth evaporated from the darkness.  It had been there for a while, warm, suffusing, but now it was gone, like the glow of the sun.  It left her in eclipse, unable to find her way.  Sticks cracked under her shoes, like bones.  Shadows as old as the trees and the hills seeped out, older even than the warmth she had felt from the darkness.  They were shadows that were not shadows—a Darkness That Was Not Darkness, something from before there were such things as Light or Time. 

She could feel it, sluggish and silvery, moving in the air around her.  It made her run harder.  The air in her lungs turned bitter and the ache in her legs grew, spreading tiring webs of pain through her muscles.  She would be too tired and weak to break free. 

It might have Dadda! 

She couldn't hear his footfalls.  The woods were more than quiet; they were silent.  No sound was being made by any other thing.  She opened her mouth and cried out, "Dadda!" 

The sound was shattering, deafening.  The trees, the soil, the starless sky all took a breath.  The sensation was a sensual but sordid fluttering that wove through her body.  A spell broken.  A moment that had come and then passed on.  She could see him.  He was standing on the other side of the trees.  She breathed out, hard.  Had they come full circle?  Were they back in the clearing where they had been camping? 

No.  This was a different place. 

Dadda was there but not alone. 

The woman with him was a strange angel in a dark dress.  Sarah could see she was beautiful.  She had the shape that, somehow, Sarah had been taught was the one boys and men wanted next to them every night.  Perfume emanated from her, sweet and honeyed, but underneath it was a rankness, too—a salty stench that made Sarah stay away.  Dad was not staying away; he was very close to her, his eyes on the woman who glistened in the risen moon's light—glistened like an earthworm. 

... _like Dionin ..._

Sarah took a step forward, disturbing the grass, making it rustle.  The woman froze.  She had been cradling Dad's chin, peering into his eyes.  Her irises were the colour of autumn rust and her hair was winter grey, threaded with stains of old blood.  Sarah could see the woman's skin showing beneath her dress, taut mottled patches revealing bruised, scabbing flesh.  There was grease in the woman's hair, traces of grave soil, and white worms.  She bared teeth at Sarah, teeth that had not eaten in years. 

Dad turned to Sarah, but Sarah could not find her voice to speak to him.  Sarah could feel her breath catching, knowing what she wanted to say to him, but knowing it would do no good.  The woman was retreating, taking her rancour with her back to the grave, back to the tomb, back to wherever she had come from.  Dad's eyes were already following her when Sarah found her voice, freeing it from her throat. 

"Dadda, I love you!  Please don't go with her!  Don't leave me! _ Don't go!_ "  Small, pathetic words of no consequence. 

Dad was already following the woman into the bracken, parting the branches that slashed at his face.  Sarah could hear him calling out to the woman.  He wanted her now, not the love of his little girl.  He was lost to Sarah.  Back at the campsite, the small fire they had lit had gone out. 

All that remained were white ashes and a little dust. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah stood looking at where the woods ended, where the grass thinned and the tracks led home.  Dawn was coming.  The frost of morning was in the air.  Her fingers and toes were cold again and there was no-one to warm them for her.  She blinked tears out of her eyes.  Inside her, the Flame was still burning.  It would never go out. 

"I'll be waiting," she said, "ever-lasting, ever-burning, like the sun." 

A sound, lonesome, empty and abandoned, came not from inside her, but from somewhere in among the trees. 

Sarah walked away from the woods, alone. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty-One

She came to with a jolt, banging her head against the flooring.  Blinking bright stars from her eyes, Sarah got to her feet.  She rubbed her bruised brow as she stumbled to the steps to look outside. " What happened?" 

Jedda's face was a mask. " We are up on a sandbar." 

"We crashed?" 

"Yes," Ossen said, shame-faced. " The spell was broken somehow." 

Jedda put a hand on the old man's shoulder. " It's all right.  I'll get us off of it." 

~ ~ ~

Jedda stopped pushing to wipe sweat from her eyes.  Her lungs felt laced with fine hot wires.  She leaned against the boat's hull.  It might have been easier from dry land, but the sand here was a grainy syrup.  So little to brace against meant they were going nowhere fast.  She had strength, but it was not enough.  Pushing and panting, she kept trying, heaving at the boat, desperate to move it off the sandbar.  Time was not on their side.  The first luminous threads of twilight were weaving through the sky.  A bitter chill filled the air.  Night was coming and it would bring the Fallen One's servants with it.  Jedda's muscles felt like over-wound cords, and her fingers were becoming clumsy from the cold of the water and the strain of the work. 

"It's no good," Jedda said between gasps for breath. 

"Let me help you." 

Jedda made a face, gritting her teeth, stretching out her hamstrings and triceps. " Sarah, you can't.  You're too weak." 

Too late.  Sarah was in the water beside her, leaning in and pushing already.  Jedda smiled, despite her worries, and did the same.  Ossen watched them, unspeaking.  His eyes were on Sarah as she heaved her slight frame against the hull.  Jedda could see how red her pale face was becoming, how shaky her hands were.  A sudden tremor shook Sarah from the base of her spine to the nape of her neck.  She swallowed a gasp. 

Then Jedda cried out, backing away from the boat. 

"What is it?" 

" _The water!_  It is coming in.  Look, it was around our ankles, now it is at our thighs." 

She was right.  Jedda had been so long in the water that she'd gone numb.  The water was rising up the sandbar, buoying the boat somewhat.  Sarah nodded at Jedda, a slight glow to her eyes.  Or was that a trick of the light? 

"One last go.  One last try."  She winked at Jedda. 

They ground their teeth, gnawed the insides of their mouths, their bodies rigidly pivoting, their feet sinking deeper and deeper into slimy sand.  Even with the higher water level, it felt like it was not going to work. 

Then it happened. 

A giving, a release, a letting go.  They both gasped aloud as the boat slithered down from the sandbar into the water.  The edges of the sky were night-white.  Soon, there would be darkness all around.  Jedda looked at Sarah.  She was weeping and exhausted, but hand in hand, they clambered back on board with smiles on their faces. 

~ ~ ~

"How did you survive?"  asked Sarah through a mouthful of their evening meal—plain black bread, beef jerky, and water from their flasks.  Jedda looked to Sarah and then to Ossen.  He nodded. 

"It was a golem that burned.  Not me.  Ossen made it out of the dirt and moisture that clung to the walls of the dungeon.  There is enough filth down there to make a hundred golems.  A few scraps of memory and words that I had chosen made it believable.  Posing as a Sworn was the easy part because most people are too scared of them to look too closely, and I was well-trained in fighting by father before ... he died." 

Sarah's brow creased. " I'm sorry.  My dad passed away as well.  You miss him." 

Jedda nodded curtly. " I miss him, and I hate the woman who killed him.  I mean to kill her too, whatever way I can.  Ianna will die by my hand, one day." 

Silence followed Jedda's words, and they ate the rest of the meal without another word. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty-Two

Sarah sat on the side of the boat as it steered itself downriver.  Jedda was below, sleeping, and Ossen was at the stern.  Sarah felt alone on the Path, even with them here.  Even though she was dry and warm now, she still had not shaken off a chill from her struggle with the thing in the water.  It was a cold worm, writhing inside her.  Daybreak was painting itself over the remnants of night's darkness.  The waters of the river shone silver and white as the sun came up.  Sarah knew it was beautiful, but she did not feel like seeing it right now.  She was hollow, scraped out, empty.  Three years of Seythe, away from her family, school, friends, and home. 

Could she ever go home again after all this? 

Live a life without fire and flames? 

She did not want to go on, but she had to.  From inside the boat, she heard Jedda moaning. _ At least,_ she thought, _I'm not the only one here who has bad dreams._  She had to go on to the Fellhorn, across the mountains that seemed to grow on the horizon and which now took up the lower half of the sky. _ There is only one thing to do otherwise,_ she thought, looking down at the shimmering silver water. 

No.  Not yet. 

~ ~ ~

Restless days went by in the boat.  Sarah lapsed into sleep when she could, but the slightest creak or moan of the vessel brought her jumping awake.  Odd, thatched bamboo huts lined the river.  Encroaching trees, bent and old, crowded the banks like weary travellers desperate to quench their thirst.  Their roots were warty, writhing toes sunk into the mossy water to drink deeply of the depths.  More scattered houses could be seen through the trees, and occasionally a boat was grounded at the riverside.  The houses looked empty and the little boats, unused.  Decay and dank webbing decorated them, with lichen and mould settling into the damper resting places.  The tree roots intertwined with the abandoned houses and boats, reclaiming wood that was once their own.  The heavy air hummed with bugs, and Sarah and Jedda busied themselves swatting the little bloodsuckers away.  Ossen ignored them.  From the trees came a fibrous rustling.  Sarah looked up, peering into the gloom.  She saw nothing there.  Nothing.  But she still heard something—the rattling of hanging bones.  Furtive eyes watched them from the sloping banks of the river as the sun sank away. 

"Where are we now, Ossen?" 

It was Jedda who answered. _" Grah'na and its swamps.  The Mother save us."_ 

_"_ _Is there no other route?"_ 

_"_ _No," said Ossen. " We must cross into a place they cannot follow.  Grah'na is where we must go."_ 

_The lack of steadiness in the Wayfarer's tone unnerved Sarah.  She noticed his eyes flicker about, searching the curling fronds and soft hanging veils of Grah'na, and his steps were less firm, his posture less straight and assured._ 

_"_ _Why can't they follow us in here?"_ 

_"_ _Because there are things in the world that even the Fallen-born fear," said Jedda._ 

~ ~ ~

Sarah had been dozing when she heard fighting from outside.  Without a second thought, she dropped down into the boat, listening to the whine and ricochet of missiles striking the wooden sides.  Gruff masculine barks followed thunder-flashes of white and fire.  The crack and bang of glass breaking.  Hurricane lanterns mounted on the boat's aft and stern went out, and the firing from outside intensified, wild and blind.  Sarah crawled on hands and knees to the gangway and peered out.  Were Ossen and Jedda okay?  Were they dead? 

Sarah inhaled, tasting a burnt-metal tang on the air.  She drew Fang free from its leather scabbard and ran her fingers over its smooth blade and hard angles, making sure she was ready in case they were boarded. 

The firing stopped. 

And then a miniature sun was born. 

For a frozen moment, Sarah saw the scene made still—scalding white, burning itself into her eyes.  Things that resembled men, but were not, swarmed into the water; others clustered in groups on the riverbanks.  They were cowering and shielding their eyes from the brilliance that burned overhead.  A perfect sphere of light hung above the boat.  She saw that it was the work of Ossen, who stood proud and bold on the deck, supporting the hovering sphere with Jedda at his side. 

Sarah's gaze was drawn back to the bank, to the rough-haired, scruffy figures who milled about there and waved crude bows and crossbows at the light.  They snarled curses in a guttural language she couldn't understand.  She could see nocturnal, shining eyes and ugly bared teeth.  Their faces were feral, hateful masks stretched over bone, wanting to tear their enemies into bloody bits and pieces.  Still whooping, shrieking and shouting curses, they retreated back into the trees. 

The banks of the river were soon silent once more.  Ossen lowered his hands and the glowing sphere unfurled like a flower of woven gold and silver and scattered like shimmering dust onto the night breeze. 

"What were those things, Ossen?" 

"Those, Sarah, were the Molloi—sad, degenerate creatures but vicious and murderous too.  The hail of arrows and crossbow bolts was a territorial act.  They were telling us we have crossed into their lands, although I think they now fear us more than they did originally.  They are nocturnal, so light blinds them.  Remember that, should you ever have the misfortune to meet a Molloi again." 

~ ~ ~

The temple came into view an hour after they passed the Molloi.  The further they travelled into the close and creeping depths of the swamps, the more unease gathered in Sarah's heart.  The waters seemed to be turning sludgy and grey.  The air too seemed to take on an indistinct quality.  Neither mist, nor fog, but almost as if a dissipation of their surroundings was taking place, like the world was becoming translucent and washed-out or was slowly fading away.  The cold in the air seemed not a mere change in temperature.  It was difficult to describe.  It got inside and brought bad memories bobbing to the surface, like dead bodies in the water. 

Like the first time she saw a corpse. 

It happened years ago, but Sarah still remembered it well. 

Dragged ashore and left behind when the waters went, Mom had said.  They had been together then, Mom's warm hand in hers, sadness in her eyes and a reassuring smile that made Sarah feel safe despite the damp horror of the dead man sprawled before her.  Mom's words from that day rang clear in her mind. 

"Poor soul.  I wonder why he did it.  Let himself get taken under by life." 

Then, Mom turned her away from death and they walked back home in the dusk.  Mom had called the police, who took the body away. 

But that didn't stop the dreams.  Night after night, for weeks, the dead man was in Sarah's dreams.  His face cut up.  His soaked clothes—a well-made pinstripe suit—and his hands decorated with finely crafted feminine rings.  The lake's water had not cleaned the nail varnish from his fingertips.  Sarah remembered what the cop who came to their house had said. 

"One less faggot is no great loss, ma'am." 

The words had made Mom throw him out of the house, badge or no badge. 

"Human nature's such an ugly thing sometimes," Mom had said afterwards. " Don't you become like that now, Sarah.  Not like him.  Wearing a uniform like that just gives him power.  It doesn't, and never will, make him _right_." 

Sarah closed her eyes for a moment. 

The boat made her feel woozy—that was all it was.  Nothing else.  There were no faces in the high grass by the banks.  No dead men with bloodied teeth and beaten-in eyes.  No rotten fingers trailing in the water, decorated with finely crafted feminine rings.  No tongues lolling like slippery pale slugs through torn-up lips.  There were no voices whispering to her. 

No, there's nothing there, only the night's wind, nothing more. 

The boat drew up against the bank.  There was no dock. 

"Why are we stopping here?" 

"To pay our respects," said the Wayfarer. " Come on, both of you now.  Quickly." 

Sarah and Jedda followed Ossen off the vessel and onto dry land.  Sarah couldn't resist a look back.  There was nothing there.  The boat.  The ebbing grey waters that had lapped against mud, grass, and soil.  Nothing strange there.  No, nothing at all. 

A temple stood before them.  It was a two-tiered rectangular structure of pale yellow stone that reminded Sarah both of a pagoda and a pyramid.  The outer walls were decorated with ornate hieroglyphics made up of slanting and circular characters that Sarah did not recognise. 

"Are you okay?"  asked Jedda. 

"I'm fine." 

"No more bad dreams?" 

"No more bad dreams." 

~ ~ ~

Within the temple was a simple courtyard bordered by crumbling stone.  A semi-circle of women waited for them inside.  There were women of all ages, from adolescent girls to mothers bearing children, to an old woman who stood apart in the centre of the semi-circle.  All of them wore plain black tunics and pantaloons.  All of them were barefoot and bareheaded.  The three companions entered, Ossen removing his cowl, and Sarah and Jedda their shoes.  The stone was smooth and surprisingly warm beneath their bare feet.  They approached the patiently waiting semi-circle.  Sarah could feel their eyes on her.  Her skin prickled and pimpled with gooseflesh.  She could not help staring at the old woman whose bowed face was lined with countless wrinkles and whose eyes were pursed between twin clefts of wrinkled tissue.  Her robe seemed too big for her as her slender, liver-spotted hands emerged from the cavernous sleeves to grasp Ossen by the hand.  She shook it with strength.  A young woman separated from the semi-circle and approached.  Across her upturned palms lay a scarf of black silk threaded with filigreed jade.  A little girl also approached, bearing a mound of shimmering silver dust in her cupped hands.  The old woman began to speak, a low croaking and clicking that Ossen translated.  It was like no language Sarah had heard from a human mouth before. 

"In honour of your courage in coming this far and your promise as a Daughter of the Flame, Sarah.  You are to be blessed by this gathering." 

"But, Ossen, who are they?" 

"The Daughters of Yagga." 

Sarah froze on the spot at the name of the old witch from the Wood Beneath the Worlds. 

"I do not want to be blessed by them.  Not in _her_ name." 

Ossen turned his one eye on her. " It is a blessing not to be refused, Sarah.  Yagga is as sacred as Gorra in Seythe.  I'm sure he told you as much.  To his spring blossom, she is autumn's long twilight.  To his bright summer day, she is winter's coldest and darkest night.  One cannot be without the other—"

"I don't care!  She hurt me, Ossen!  Don't you understand that?  She kept me like a pet and beat me with a stick!  I will _not_ be blessed by women who follow her!  No way!" 

Sarah locked eyes with the old woman.  She felt a slight fuzziness, a tingling at the base of her skull.  There it was again, that cloudiness, that fading away of everything around her.  And her face, that old face, it was the one Sarah had tried to dream away.  The dead man reaching for her with limpid hands and lily-white fingers, barnacles crusting over what were once fine, shining feminine rings. 

" _Come here to me, child.  Take my blessing.  Yea, though he said that one less faggot is no great loss.  Amen."_ 

The scent of dirty water and weeds clung to her.  She could hear the _glub-glub-glub_ of fluid in the dead man's throat as he tried to speak. 

Momma ... where' s Momma? ...  Momma! 

The slippery, twitching fingers were almost touching her. 

The wretched thing stumbled towards her.  In her mind's eye, she saw the Flame within her—a flickering, fluttering shadow that gave off no heat and danced on in silence.  She imagined drawing it up into herself, like taking one breath after another, letting it flow out and fill her being from head to fingers to toes, flowing out from a space just below her heart.  She could feel the Flame this time, its movement within, those breaths she took were becoming more regular.  Shorter, sharper, harder, quicker.  She felt it turning from a flow into a flood, surging through her limbs and generating a heat and fury that made her toes curl and her fingers clench.  And then, she let it go—not as a raging torrent this time, but a great golden river of light running out of her and into the dead man, the old woman, and on into the other Daughters of Yagga.  On and on and on it went, until she was spent.  The light of the Flame evaporated, leaving her gasping and wanting to fall.  And the old woman and the daughters were all ash and stains on the ground ...

~ ~ ~

... Sarah came to on the boat deck, blinking and staring as Ossen steered the boat downriver past the temple without stopping, leaving the ancient, empty structure behind. 

"Aren't we stopping here, Ossen?" 

"Why would we do that?"  he asked, turning. " There's nothing in there but old ghosts and ashes." 

A slight smile tugged at his lips and was followed by a wink before he turned back to steering.  Sarah looked back at the temple before it was lost amid hanging vines and tangled trees.  In the doorway, she saw a figure watching them go by.  Stooped old hag?  Young woman?  Virgin child?  It was hard to tell in the gloom, in the ever-shifting shadows.  Soon, the temple was lost to her. 

She knew, somehow, that she would never find it again. 

~ ~ ~

#  _Chapter Twenty-Three_

The boat sailed on in a subdued but pleasant manner for the next few days, alt _hough the swamps of Grah'na remained a forbidding sight with their canopies of warped, twisted trees robed in sour, watery mist.  Sarah could feel the sodden swamp air like a lukewarm sweat on her skin._ _ She sometimes felt as if the sweltering shades were observing her, but Ossen swore no Fallen-born would enter the swamps and that the Molloi were not nearly so subtle as to be able to creep about unseen in the shadows.  Still, his promises made Sarah feel no easier in her gut as the boat drifted on and the dark green depths around them seemed to close in with each passing day._ 

~ ~ ~

_A sound in the night woke her._ 

_Ossen and Jedda were asleep below.  Sarah was on watch and had dozed off.  When she opened her eyes, she saw a light like campfire flames not so far away.  The swamp was quiet but for the humming of insects.  The boat was stilled for the night against an outcrop of loamy turf.  Sarah's gaze followed the outcrop, noting that the gangly tree roots and accrued silt made a natural bridge to where the fire flickered in the dark.  That sound again—yes, hushed voices.  She was sure of it._ 

_Kay'lo?  Molloi?  Some servants of the Fallen-born discussing what they meant to do to them whilst they slept?_ 

_She closed her eyes and saw the Flame still there in her breast, dancing its shadows.  Taking deep breaths, she thought,_ _I can bring it out of me again._ _ She crossed the bridge of roots and mulch, ducking between the serpentine tree trunks.  The fire was closer, she could see that, and the forms squatting around it were more defined.  They did not look familiar, and their voices were peculiar.  They were not the first strange voices she had heard in this World, but they were still strange compared to all of the others, even the sibilant speech of the Fallen-born._ 

_Closer and closer she came, until she was_ peering through the undergrowth at the creatures huddled around the fire.  They were draped in clothes that were little more than tattered rags, but she could see that their bodies were not only made of flesh.  She could see arms and legs of crude iron, jointed and riveted.  Their skin was bleached, dirty, and grey.  Their faces were wan, with limpid eyes staring fixedly into the flames.  But as the small gathering moved around the fire, she saw that they were not huddling in for warmth, they were cooking something. 

Sarah saw what was turning, dripping, on their roasting spit. 

Her hand went to her mouth, either to gasp or to be sick, she wasn't sure, but what came out was a croak.  At the sound, the creatures turned towards her.  They peered into the dark, trying to see what was there.  Sarah sank low into the undergrowth and held her breath, not moving a muscle as she saw the creatures stir and prowl about the clearing.  She heard the harsh clicking and grinding of their iron joints as well as the softer sounds made by bones and flesh.  She heard some come so close she could smell them.  She wanted to breathe out so bad.  They were filthy, the odour of them worse than the swamp. 

She waited for years—that's what it felt like—before they stopped their hunt around the clearing and returned to the fire.  Crouching down in the brush, Sarah began to crawl backwards, an inch at a time, not daring to go faster lest she rouse them again.  Once, they might believe it was fauna rustling by, but twice, and in the same place, they would know someone was there.  She had seen that some of them had pincers, hooks, and claws for hands.  They shone in the firelight.  The thought of them coming after her with those made her shiver. 

Sarah bumped into something. 

Slowly and carefully, she turned her head to see what she had backed into—one of the trees that made up the bridge of roots, most likely. 

It was no tree. 

A face hung in the darkness before her: a mask of beaten iron with very human, staring eyes.  It made a guttural chuckling sound as it came towards her, one palm outstretched, another ending in one of those snipping, snapping pincers. 

Sarah fainted. 

~ ~ ~

Their eyes examined her in a way that made her skin crawl when she came to.  They smiled at her with all the love of a butcher for a pig.  Slippery hands were upon her, fastened over her mouth before she had the chance to scream. 

"Ossen!  Jedda!" 

Her cries were muffled by damp hands, which she tried to bite in vain.  They dragged her, kicking and twisting, towards the fire and the foul stench emanating from whatever was on the roasting spit.  They thrust her face towards it, letting her see the charred, raw yet burned, barely recognisable thing that was once a human being.  The voice she heard was guttural.  She guessed it was the masked one speaking. 

"Be calm.  There's enough of her for everyone." 

" _I want her arm!"_ 

"Eyes, _preetty-preetty_ eyes, those are mine." 

"Feet, I want her feet.  The toes look tasty." 

"You'll get what I give you."  He turned to Sarah. " Or maybe she doesn't want to give us her body parts.  Do you?" 

Sarah shook her head, still gagged by their hands. 

The masked one brought her face close to his. " Well, girl, that's just too bad for you, because we're going to take them anyway.  We'll be moving on from this swamp soon, and it will be good to have some jerky and victuals for the journey." 

A flaccid white tongue licked out of the mask's mouth, and the other creatures laughed heartily at her. 

~ ~ ~

Sarah tried to move and could not. 

She remembered that a summer or so ago, Woran had taken her to the pig farm in the Norn Valley.  Not one owned by the Saltwines or Taproots, but the Trotters.  She had watched them hogtie their pigs before taking the animals away to be prepared for market.  That was what the creatures had done to her.  Her wrists and ankles were tied behind her back and fastened by the rope. _ Trussed up like an animal ready for the cooking pot,_ she thought, eyeing the fire that was still flickering away.  The creatures were not paying her any attention for now.  She watched them.  Some seemed to sleep; others were in a huddle, rolling dice.  She caught snatches of their conversation. 

"Double pips for her eyes." 

"Ten for the toes." 

"Five for a hand of fingers." 

"One pip for that sweet little tongue.  I'll bet it tastes _goood_." 

Sarah's stomach churned and sweat broke out on her skin.  She kicked against the rope, hurting her shoulders and arms as it jerked back. 

Help me! 

They had gagged her with a filthy rag so she could not scream.  She was watching the dice when a thought passed through her head.  She focused on it.  Concentrating hard.  As the dice fell, they bounced off the ground and struck one of the creatures in the eyes.  It screamed, holding its face with its fleshy hand. 

The others laughed at its pain. " Double pips for _your_ eyes, Cag'kh. _ Bwa-ha-ha-ha!_ " 

Cag'kh, rubbing his eyes, shouted and lashed out with his iron arm.  The arm ended in three vicious hooks, which tore open the breast of one of the laughing creatures.  The laughter died away. 

"Not funny," said the wounded one. " You shouldn't have done that, Cag'kh." 

Cag'kh and the wounded one got to their feet.  The wounded one had two arms of iron, one ending in a hard sphere and the other in a blade.  It raised its blade, and Cag'kh raised his hooks.  The masked one strode in between them.  Raising his pincer hand and flesh-hand, he was about to speak when Sarah found herself staring right into his eyes—those horrible human eyes—and she told him what to say. 

"Cag'kh.  Hac'kt.  Sit back down or I'll cut you both open." 

Cag'kh and Hac'kt looked at each other then at the masked one, and Sarah, her brow furrowed, her bound fists clenched, told them what to think and do next.  Cag'kh's hooks disappeared into the chest of the masked one.  The eyes in the mask bulged, and Sarah shivered as she saw it look at her and understand what had just happened, as it died.  Cag'kh stumbled away from the body.  Every one of the creatures was doing the same. 

Then, they all screamed and attacked each other. 

Sarah watched when she could, reaching into their minds, telling them what to do, but she had to close her eyes sometimes too.  She did not want to see what they were doing to each other with those blades, hooks, and pincers.  The screams and shouts worsened towards the end. 

Then there was silence. 

Sarah opened her eyes. 

One of the creatures was still standing. 

It was Cag'kh.  He looked at the bodies on the ground and then at her.  His pale face twisted as he spoke. " You.  You doing this.  This was you magic.  Speak to us without a mouth.  Make us do without hands.  Now I do to you." 

He was coming towards her, his dripping hooks slashing through the air and his black teeth showing in a grin.  He was close to the fire.  Sarah looked into the flames, at the remains on the roasting spike.  Hands made of flame and a face that was all fire and fury rose up.  Cag'kh screamed as the hands closed on him, pulling him into the huge fiery mouth of the conjured face.  The fire ate him.  It took its time with Cag'kh.  Sarah watched him kicking, screaming and dying. 

There was silence again. 

The fire faded under the steaming weight of Cag'kh's body.  Sarah drew out a thin flickering tongue of flame, narrow and fine as string, and brought it to the rope that bound her.  The rope smouldered and snapped, and she let the fire go out.  She got to her feet and ran from the clearing—straight into something. 

It was Ossen, striding through the swamp foliage, a beacon of white light above his head.  Jedda was not far behind him, holding aloft a similar glowing sphere.  Seeing the bodies, the dead fire, and Sarah standing alone, unharmed, Ossen's face went from a frown to a sober smile. " You did this, Sarah?" 

"With the Flame," she said. " Yes." 

"Deaths better than they deserved," said Ossen. 

_More bad guys,_ Sarah thought, looking at him. 

Bang _-dead!_ 

"What were they, Ossen?"  she asked. 

"Phages, Sarah.  Flesh-eating horrors left over from a war long ago.  Built to be the perfect warriors, utterly merciless and bloodthirsty.  But their flesh was made from dead things and dead things only rot and hunger for the living." 

"Well, they're dead now." 

"These ones are." 

"You mean—"

"I doubt these are the only Phages in Grah'na.  When the others discover this, they will be out for blood.  You did well to keep your nerve.  Others have gone mad, even taken their own lives given half the chance.  Strength is not merely proved by how much blood one has spilt, how many foes defeated, or how many battles won.  Sometimes, living day-to-day, hour-to-hour, and minute-to-minute is a truer sign of one's mettle.  The ticking of the clock and the passage of time wear away courage more surely than any mortal blade might do—"

"You're saying we must go, then?" 

"Yes, yes.  Lead the way, Sarah.  Onward to the mountains.  Onward." 

"You mean back to the boat." 

"Ahem, yes.  Back to the boat, and then onward." 

~ ~ ~

#  _Chapter Twenty-Four_

The foothills gradually became barer and dryer as the river left Grah'na behind.  Soil seemed to seep away and grass grew thin, wispy, and pale before it was lost to sight altogether.  They moored the boat and set foot on land once more.  Sarah stared at what lay ahead, unable to take her eyes off it, as they walked.  The way became rough and uneven as the path crept ever upward into the towering darkness of the Mountains of Mourning. 

The First Wayfarer, before he fell into his great slumber in the Lost Tower, had hewn the sheer heights of these mountains into citadels of smooth, flowing, and unbroken stone; not an inch of them was shaped by mortal hands.  Mystical energies flowed through the oddly shaped stone, just as blood flows through veins.  This was why the people feared these mountains.  Sarah felt cold fear inside her breast and knew it was very real.  The rock beneath her feet had once drunk deeply of the blood lost by men and women who held the passes.  The crags and cliffs she saw rising up like rotten teeth once echoed with the screams of thousands dying, and of more who stood against the march of the Iron Gods and were crushed before them.  Sarah looked along to the far horizon, where the most distant of the mountains stood, and found she could see them as nothing other than a series of colossal and cavernous tombs. 

"Here they died.  Alone they died.  That the world might live and no more die," said Ossen. 

"Old words for long-dead hopes," said Jedda. " We need to find shelter before nightfall, Ossen.  The elements are unforgiving and bitter in this part of the World." 

With those words, a low whispering wind gusted by, chilling them all to the bone, despite the lightness of its touch. 

They followed Ossen around the mountain paths, passing caves that were deep and old but riven with fissures.  Finally, they came to a smooth, arched opening with embossed runes upon it, as if drawn by the fingers of a fine artist.  The intricate, coiling script was nothing man or woman could ever hope to decipher.  Sarah's insides felt cold, fluid, and empty as she realised how alien the runes were—how far away she was from home.  A stream of atmosphere came from beyond the archway's threshold: a dried, musty foetor that made them all hack and cough. 

"Welcome to E'phah—the city of the dead," said Ossen. 

"Do we have to go inside?" 

"We do.  This city under the mountains is a resting place.  There should only be ghosts here, nothing more.  But, there is no telling what might have made these empty halls home, so be careful and disturb nothing." 

Sarah looked upon the arch with fear, as did Jedda, but they followed Ossen into its darkness all the same. 

~ ~ ~

The smooth passages of the necropolis seemed to show no sign of dust, nor of age.  The only ghosts were the answering echoes of their footsteps.  They passed unlit openings that led into far-off chambers where they could make out only the shadowed shapes of vaulted doors.  Steps led down into a deeper darkness that slept beneath the roots of the great mountain range.  The odour of rot and decay was pervasive.  There was no sign of ordinary masonry.  The stone of the mountain had been shaped and polished until it was like the most exquisite marble.  Light filtered down through stained-glass prisms, illuminating veins and arteries of phosphorescent light.  No ornaments or relics were to be seen.  In a way, it was what Sarah imagined it would feel like to walk through the insides of a living thing. 

For two days, they followed Ossen through the corridors and tomb-chambers of E'phah.  Then, towards the end of the third day, they came to what appeared to be a cathedral—a vast chamber marked by fluted ionic columns that rose up to a ceiling they could not see.  In the centre of the chamber danced a scintillating cascade of silver and sapphire light.  As they approached it, Sarah was sure she could hear a sound coming from the light.  It was delicate and melancholy, stirring her heart and making her throat catch with its lilting choral beauty. 

"The Veil of Remembrance," said Ossen. " It lives, after a fashion.  In the light are spun the life threads of all those who died in the war against the Iron Gods.  Their bodies are entombed, but they live on here as thoughts, memories, and dreams." 

"It's beautiful," said Jedda. 

"And sad.  The sound it makes—so sad," said Sarah. 

"Yes.  It remembers life and knows it is but a memory and light," said Ossen. " Come, we are almost through.  We should be at the way into the Western Wastes after one more night's sleep." 

They walked on, but Sarah looked back at the Veil, feeling its song still in her heart. 

~ ~ ~

Later, as they sat by a small fire that Ossen conjured from the ether, Sarah asked, "What were the Iron Gods?" 

"The story is a sad one, Sarah.  The Iron Gods were just machines—cogs and wheels and gears within iron shells.  They were built as guardians for the mountain cities by a race of great architects and engineers.  Once the First Wayfarer succumbed to the Long Sleep, there was nothing to stop outsiders from ransacking these wondrous halls, so the Iron Gods were built to guard them.  Yes, these halls were wondrous once.  The Iron Gods came under some influence.  It is rumoured it was the work of the Fallen One, although I am not so sure of that.  The Iron Gods drove out their former masters and made the cities their own.  They ruled over the mountains and the surrounding lands from their great thrones of stone.  They created avalanches and landslides.  Soon enough, their power grew to the point where they could generate earthquakes that shook Seythe down to its roots in the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  Something had to be done.  There was war.  Thousands died.  The Iron Gods survived.  We thought it was to be the end of this World ... until the First Wayfarer awoke, only for a short time, but it was long enough for him to blast the Iron Gods with lightning until they fell and were buried beneath the mountains in the Deep Forges." 

"That's horrible.  But what happened to the people who made the Iron Gods?" 

"You met them when we first crossed into the swamps of Grah'na, Sarah."  Jedda said. 

" _The Molloi!"_ 

"Yes, the Molloi," said Ossen, "A tragic end for such a race to endure.  Once so noble and learned.  Now, they grub in caves and the dark places of the world, eking out a primitive existence as savages.  Now go to sleep, Sarah, Jedda.  We have much ground to cover tomorrow." 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty-Five

Jedda dreamed, and in the dream she was drowning.  The inky depths around her were thick and heavy, seeming to draw her down more than buoy her up, and she could feel tight coils around her ankles, tugging at her, drawing her down no matter how hard she kicked against the force of their exertions. 

She looked down to see something bulbous, seething and shining, although something as Dark as this should have had no business shining at all.  It lacked eyes and mouth, and its only limbs were the tendrils lashing out to coil around her legs.  Its voice was more a vibration that passed through the dank fluid around her until she _felt_ it rather than _heard_. 

" _We spoke, you and I ... Daughter of Ferra ... years ago.  You called to me ... when all others had forsaken you..."_

_Mother save me_ , she thought _, it's Him._ 

She could see, as the coils tightened and drew her closer, that there were others immersed in the seething mass of Darkness.  Faces formed, torsos emerged and then submerged—arms and legs struggling in vain eternally.  Beneath the vibration of His voice, Jedda could hear their sobs, cries, and screams. 

" _You will go with the girl.  The Wayfarer will fall ... you will take the sword from her.  You will have your throne when you put out the Living Flame ... or you will share in the fate of those who drown in me..."_

"Yes, yes, I will do it.  By the Shadow of Your Darkness, I swear." 

" _Well spoken ... traitor-child ..."_

The coils snapped free and Jedda swam away fiercely, not looking back as she drifted out into the normal realms of sleep and dreams.  Away from those faces, His voice, and those screams. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty-Six

While Ossen and Jedda slept, Sarah sat on watch thinking of the Veil and its light.  The song of it, almost a voice, almost words.  She had to see it one more time.  It wouldn't take long.  She would be back in a few minutes and the others would never know she was gone.  Sarah got to her feet and followed the path back to the chamber of columns and the Veil.  Leaning forward, she put her hands out to it.  She could _feel_ it.  Power and strength filled her.  She could feel the matter of the universe itself flowing through her.  She was a part of the cosmos, its energies pouring into her body.  All existence, and its power—its pure, unstoppable, unquenchable power. _ The Flame Eternal._  She was one with it; that force, that power.  She was more than human.  She was more than life.  Sarah Bean was becoming a... _Goddess..._

And so being, she looked deep into the past and saw the beginnings recorded there. 

In the Beginning, there was the Flame, and it burned like a candle in the Greater Dark.  It burned for countless aeons and within it held everything that was, is, and could be.  And the fire of the Flame was so intense that it burned through into another space, another time—leading to an eruption that tore open the Greater Dark.  From the eruption, space and matter were born.  Then there was silence as all things cooled and settled into being.  The first stars blossomed and slowly began to warm the emptiness.  Then, there was growth and awakening.  A Great Tree sprang up out of the ether at the heart of the emptiness.  It was woven of silver and glass.  The Great Tree cast both light and shadow upon the emptiness and from these came forth two beings: A'aron and E'blis.  The Great Tree sustained them with its sap and its roots as they continued to grow and awaken.  As time went by, they became aware of one another.  They spoke for the first time and the emptiness shook violently at their words.  They continued to speak and so from their words was the World born: land, sea, air, the sun and the moon.  When they whispered, smaller tremors gave birth to insects, animals, creatures of the sea and sky.  A'aron and E'blis watched as the teeming World unfolded before them.  There was something missing.  None of the animals and creatures born could speak with them or listen to them.  So they made animals that could. 

A'aron made women and E'blis made men. 

This time was the Beginning, before the ages, and women and men were at peace. 

As time passed and the World went on, A'aron saw that E'blis had grown distant and strange.  She lived and grew in the light of the Great Tree whilst E'blis stood in the shadow and seemed to sicken and wither.  Though a shadow, like a mother's womb, can be comforting in its darkness, that which was cast upon E'blis was not. 

One day, A'aron stepped into the shadow and felt a sudden sickness assail her.  She stepped back out into the light.  A'aron now knew there was nothing soothing in the shadow about E'blis as there should have been.  It had become a Darkness That Was Not Darkness, and it was poisoning the creator of men. 

Looking down upon the World, A'aron saw the first wars being fought there.  She saw the women try to stop the men, only to be slain themselves.  Animals and creatures were butchered and the Land was soaked with the blood of the fallen.  It was a madness that had to be stopped before it brought about the end of the World. 

A'aron crossed into the shadow and confronted E'blis.  She found E'blis to be greatly changed.  Withered, thin, and sick, with the very flesh retreating from his pale bones.  A'aron told him what was happening to the World.  E'blis merely laughed.  A'aron shouted at E'blis and the World was split by the force of it.  The first earthquakes and floods began.  Many were drowned in the first tempests.  E'blis drew a sword and came at A'aron.  A'aron tore a limb from the Great Tree and it too became a sword.  They fought.  And as they fought, the World drowned under its own seas and the land sank from sight. 

This was the Age of Water, when everything changed. 

It was A'aron who disarmed and defeated E'blis after they fought for thousands of years.  But she had taken a mortal wound.  Feeling the same sickness creeping through her that had tainted E'blis, she understood at last.  Something had fallen through into the emptiness before the World was made and later hid itself away in the shadow of the Great Tree, so as not to be seen.  So hidden, it gradually worked its will upon E'blis until the creator of men and his creations were unknowingly bound to It. 

A'aron named it the Fallen One: The Darkness That Is Not Darkness. 

Knowing that she was dying and that the Fallen One, through E'blis, would consume the World, A'aron knelt over the fallen E'blis and spoke the Words That Could Not Be Undone.  Power and strength ebbed from E'blis.  He was stripped of divinity and fell onto the fresh land that rose below once the great floods subsided.  A'aron, sick from the mortal wound E'blis had inflicted, poured her soul and strength into the sword she had fashioned from the Great Tree and then cast it down so that it might be taken up by those below. 

This was the Sword of Sighs, and A'aron lived on through it even as her body fell into the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  There, the sickness took her completely.  Forever after was she known as Yagga—the Witch of the Woods. 

E'blis lived.  Though without his old power and strength, he was still bound to the Fallen One.  He went into the east to the mountain named Shadowhorn.  Ever after, the east was known as the Nightlands.  There he abided and waited for many years. 

This was the Age of Earth, when A'aron and E'blis fell into the World. 

In the Nightlands, E'blis drew men to him.  They swore their fealty and E'blis remade them as Fellfolk.  They would be led by his lieutenants—the Fallen-born, who endlessly reeked and smoked of His evil.  E'blis grew in strength as more men fell under His Shadow.  E'blis used his newfound power to create other creatures that would serve Him: Fellhounds, Dionin, Drujja and Malus, the Necrodragon. 

His armies gathered, E'blis marched upon the kingdoms of the World in His name.  But those who found the Sword of Sighs became known as Keepers of the Flame and they brought hope where E'blis and the Fallen One left only despair.  They roused kings and queens to war, leading armies into battle against the hosts of the Fallen One.  Steadily, and with great losses, they drove the dark hordes back to the Blackstone Gates at the foot of the Shadowhorn.  There, the Keepers of the Flame faced E'blis in mortal combat and all but one were slain by him.  She drove The Sword of Sighs into his heart with her last breath.  E'blis fell, his body smote upon the rocks of the mountainside. 

The peoples of the World then went back to their lands to heal and rebuild.  Some feared, though, that whilst E'blis was slain, he was the creator of men, and as long as men lived with the taint of the Fallen One woven deep into their hearts, E'blis could never truly die.  This was the Age of Air, when E'blis was driven back into darkness. 

The age that is yet to pass is that of the Flame. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sarah came back to herself after what seemed like an aeon.  Gazing about in the dark of the chamber, she saw that she was no longer alone.  Shapes, stunted and ugly, shuffled through the shadows towards her. 

_Molloi_. 

Their rough hair was painted in different shades, and their eyes shone like dim nocturnal orbs as they came towards the Veil.  Light glinted off flint axes, spears, and clubs grasped tight in their stubby fingers.  Teeth like nubs of stone showed over their grey-blue lips.  Sarah stumbled away from them, her mind still spinning from the fury of what she had seen and felt while she was one with the veil.  She ran into the dark and they followed, whooping, shrieking, and screaming.  She lost her way, finding herself in a closed chamber.  Turning, she faced the encroaching creatures.  Their eyes gleamed with night light but showed none of the intelligence they once possessed.  Snagging fingers flexed around the shafts of spears, and their ugly teeth ground, eager to spill blood and forge a few screams. 

Fang was not enough to save her, and the Flame—again, it eluded her. 

Damn, I can't frighten them off with light now, like Ossen said. 

But there, pushing through a minute crack in the smooth stone of the wall was a trailing frond of fine white root.  Sarah reached for it, grasped it hard between her fingers and called out loud to Gorra, praying he would honour his promise of three years past. 

" _Thou foot treads soft amidst thy darkening trees, O hear my call whisper on this twilight breeze!"_ 

Silence followed her words.  The Molloi, brows furrowed, began to recompose themselves and move in on her once again, clattering their spears and champing their teeth.  Then, the wall shook. 

The Molloi paused. 

Cracks raced across the stone.  With a great creaking and crashing, the wall dislodged and fell, raining down on Sarah's attackers.  Out of the jagged wound in the wall came strangling vines and thrashing knotty roots that wound around the throats of the Molloi, hanging them high.  Spears were thrown.  Crude swords hacked and slashed at the invading flora.  In the panic and rush, Sarah dived through the great hole in the wall, away from the chaos, and hurried on alone through darkness, not calling out for fear of bringing the Molloi to her. 

_But what about Ossen and Jedda?_  she thought. _ What if the Molloi come upon them as they're still sleeping?_ 

"How do I get out of here?" 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty-Eight

Jedda was already awake as Ossen came to. 

"Can't sleep, either?" 

"No," he said with a _harrumph_ , "bad dreams, something that has never been a problem for me before." 

"The _Rosara carna_?" 

"How did you know?" 

"Just because you are a Wayfarer, Ossen, does not make you so different from the rest of us.  It's the golem, isn't it?" 

"Yes ... it is." 

"You gave her a spark of life, only a spark but still it was life all the same." 

"I had to do it to save _you_ from the stake." 

"I know and I owe you my life in eternal debt for what you did.  But it still doesn't feel right, does it?  You see her and hear her when you close your eyes.  The golem at the stake, burning and screaming.  You feel responsible." 

"I do," he said, sounding more like a tired, old man than he ever had before, "but she was just a made thing, only dust and moisture, that's all, barely bound together." 

"Aren't we all, Ossen?  Aren't we all?" 

Their eyes met in the dark. _ Does he suspect me_ , Jedda wondered, _could he hear me in my dreams as I heard him?_ 

... _The Wayfarer will fall ..._

"Jedda, where's Sarah?" 

Jedda looked over to the bundle by the dead fire.  She unrolled it.  Empty. 

"Where could she have gone?" 

"Back to the Veil. _ Careless child!_ " 

Before either of them could speak another word, they heard whoops, shrieks and the clatter of crude steel echoing from the adjoining chambers.  Then, the pounding of many feet coming closer. 

A Molloi sprang from the shadows. 

Jedda's short swords flashed out, severing the ugly head from its shoulders.  Ossen stood with his staff upraised, sending blazing halos of fire into the marauders. 

"This way," he shouted over the din, "Jedda, after me." 

"Sarah will have to look after herself, for now," said Jedda, as she followed Ossen, fleeing before the approaching horde, "we'll be no good to her dead." 

Ossen said nothing in response. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Twenty-Nine

She was sure she was going deeper than Ossen ever meant them to go.  The streams of water were foul and cold and detritus that had accumulated like silt let off a ripe, rising stench.  There was very little light to guide the way, none of the flickering phosphorescent veins.  Sarah felt her way through the blackness.  Mulch crunched under her feet.  Softer clusters and clumps collapsed in on themselves as she trod on them.  Sarah could feel the place sucking her in, turning her insides to cool Jell-O, leaving no trace of warmth.  Her downward progress was accompanied by the charnel house music of starving rats, and of water seeping through cracks in the smooth walls of the city.  It was a long way down, or so it seemed, into the utter darkness that slept beneath the roots of the mountain.  Her eyes made out rusted sconces mounted on the walls to either side, set there to light the way for bearers of the dead.  All were unlit and had become nests for spiders.  As she went further and deeper, she slowed her steps, creeping on as quietly as she could.  Even though her eyes were sharp, in this all-consuming penumbra she was as near to blind as she had ever been.  With a swift hand, she reassured herself that Fang was still secured at her waist.  If there were something other than herself and the sleeping dead down here, she would strike at it first. 

Or use the Flame—if she could. 

It was then that she saw the light: a pale light coming from not far below. 

Keeping her breath steady, knowing she had no other way to go, except to retreat into the howling hordes above, she went on ahead until phosphorescence once again illuminated her surroundings, but there was a tinge to it that was more sickly and diseased than the light cast in the higher chambers and vaults.  Three roughly cut tunnels ran away from her until they became dark and unlit once more.  Reaching out to touch the shining stone walls, she saw the light was cast by a fungus that had grown thick in the cracks running through the walls.  She could make out deeper hollows cut into the tunnels and the embalmed bones that they held.  Here, a shattered helm.  There, a rusted sword.  The dead were sleeping.  Nothing here was stirring. 

So she thought ... until she heard a wail that was not made by some stray underground wind. 

Swallowing hard, Sarah drew out Fang.  With her free hand, she scraped handfuls of the shimmering mould from the walls and onto the metal, to light her way.  The sound had come from somewhere up ahead, deep within the unlit, farther darkness.  Holding her sword angled, ready to strike, Sarah followed the sound into shadow. 

Whereabouts she now stood underneath the Mountains of Mourning, she did not know.  She was alone and without the Wayfarer.  The cold here was not just rising from the ground: it was a part of it, near tangible.  She walked slowly, her muscles tense, her heart fast, and her breathing shallow.  She could taste fear mingled with hate in the air, like something spoiled lying on her tongue.  The toe of her boot struck something soft and meaty on the ground. 

It let out a cry in the same tone as the wail she had followed to this place. 

She stepped back and raised her sword, illuminating what lay at her feet.  She saw a man, or what was left of him: a husk of blackened, corrupted meat that was slowly sloughing off withered bones.  The man was dressed in the remains of scaled armour and his eyes were white globules sunk deep into the rotten flesh of his face.  A tongue worked feverishly behind browning, toothless gums, aching to speak. 

Sarah, wary, leaned in to listen. 

And the half-dead man told her his tale. 

~ ~ ~

The hall Sarah next came to was as she had expected—ruined and empty with a single long table of stone slabs dividing its centre.  Dust and cobwebs were everywhere.  She waited patiently at the nearest end of the table until light came.  It was a warm light, soft, and seeping in from no place she could see.  Before her eyes, the filth of the hall evaporated as if it had never been.  Every inch of stone suddenly appeared polished and as smooth as it had once been.  And the table was laden with platters of spiced meat, poached fish, sweet fruits and flagons of mead, ale, and rice wine.  The smell arising from the feast made her mouth water.  She reached out, plucked a ripe, red grape and popped it into her mouth.  She bit through the thin skin into the cool, wet, sugary flesh beneath and smiled as she swallowed the morsel. 

Some time later, a woman entered the hall. 

Sarah's belly felt like it was full to bursting.  She watched as the woman approached.  The woman moved without making a sound and seeming to drift towards Sarah, as might a ghost.  But she was no such thing.  Her snow-white hair tumbled down over her samite robe and Sarah could see that her figure was full and curvaceous.  Her eyes never wavered from Sarah, and they were coloured like the dawn, shifting between shades of amber, violet, grey, and clear cerulean.  Sarah felt the woman's hands upon her, and the woman smiled and led Sarah by the hand out through a doorway she had not seen before and into a scented space of hanging silks and pillows that could only be a bed chamber. 

Once there, she released Sarah's hand and took a short step away. 

Then she lunged, meaning to have a feast of her own.  Her mouth hung open, showing brutish fangs. 

Sarah showed the barrow-witch a Fang of her own. 

The woman recoiled with a gasp as Fang's blade sank in.  She clutching at her chest and then fell to the ground.  Sarah saw a change come upon her and the space around them.  She knew that the words of the dying man had been true.  She watched as the woman's beauty withered and receded just as summer turns to autumn and then autumn to winter.  Her hair rapidly thinned out into torn, frayed strands.  Her skin mottled over.  Fine fingers and elegant toes became little more than straggling twigs torn from dead trees.  But the eyes, they stayed the same.  They never changed, those eyes of dawn.  The woman shook, licking her thin lips, gurgling in her throat as Sarah advanced.  Tears ran down Sarah's wasted cheeks as she rested the shining edge of Fang against the woman's neck. 

"How can it be?"  the woman asked. " You were in the hall and the spell is strong there." 

"I carry the Flame," Sarah said. " You know what that means, right?" 

The woman gurgled in her throat, nodding fiercely. 

Smiling at her, Sarah drew the blade away from her throat and displayed it, turning the blade from side to side.  The woman saw how it shone, and it hurt her eyes with its brightness and cleanness.  True sobs wracked her and she cowered away. 

"Please, don't kill me, Daughter of the Flame." 

"I don't mean to kill you if ..."

"Yes, yes, yes?" 

"If you tell me the way out of these catacombs and back to my friends.  They are in the upper chambers with the Veil of Remembrance." 

The woman snarled and shrank in on herself. 

Sarah pressed Fang back against her throat. " You will tell me now, or I will take your head.  Your call." 

"Spare me, Mistress.  Good girl, good Mistress.  I did not know.  I would not have tried to feed on you if I had known who you were." 

Sarah took the woman's trembling chin in her hand and raised her eyes until they met. " You gave me food and drink when I was lost, and I thank you for that.  But now, I wish to go, and you will tell me where I need to go to, yes?" 

She smiled a cold smile and the woman wept tears of fear as she told Sarah the way out of the lower tunnels and back to the higher halls. 

~ ~ ~

_Sarah walked for what felt like hours and hours.  Her legs ached as she followed the barrow-witch's directions along passages, through chambers, and up to ledges and crawlspaces._ _ I hope I find the others,_ _Sarah thought,_ _before the Molloi do_ _.  Finally, she came out into a smooth passage, much like the ones she had left behind._ _ If I'm not almost there, then I can't be far away_ _, thought Sarah._ 

_Sarah could see gigantic shapes standing around her in the dim light, all formed like men, only as tall as the tallest buildings could be.  Their heads resembled those of mighty dragons, tusked elephants, fierce bullocks and sabre-toothed lions.  Their unmoving hands grasped blades, axes, and hammers.  Beyond them, she could see rusting vats and vast rough-edged openings in the rock walls where iron had once been smelted and formed._ 

_What is this place?_ 

_A voice in her head, the same as those she had heard when she was bound up in the Veil, spoke to her._ 

_..._ _These are the Deep Forges.  Long ago, the Molloi built the Iron Gods here.  And here they are buried because the black fires inside them burn always.  Like the Flame, they shall never go out.  They sleep beneath the mountains.  Waiting to awaken.  Dreaming dark dreams of dust, death, and utter destruction ..._

_Sarah crept past the iron giants, holding her breath, her fingers tight around Fang's hilt.  She took care to step softly, as if she were sneaking through the house back home and Mom's door was open wide.  She crept on and on until there she heard a sound.  A creaking, at first.  And then a grinding._ 

_Then, an infernal howl._ 

_Sarah spun around and looked up into eyes of fire and a mouth that spat tongues of cinder-dark flame.  A great crown of black iron was upon the thing's brow, and the workmanship, its intricacy, was beautiful and breathtaking to behold.  It was moving towards her, leaving its place among its fellows, arising from its ancient slumber, grinding and roaring its hatred of life and all living things._ 

_..._ _Kaomos ... is awake ..._

_Sarah ran for her life._ 

~ ~ ~

_As she ran, Sarah heard a great din up ahead.  The chaos of battle.  Swords clashed.  Clubs crashed.  And feral screams of defeat rang out._ 

_Ossen and Jedda!_ 

_She saw them standing amidst the Molloi horde.  They were barely holding the surging creatures at bay, but they were holding them all the same.  Sarah called out over the cacophony.  At least, she tried to.  She could not be heard because the Molloi had seen and heard her gargantuan pursuer.  Like insects scattering to the safety of their holes, they fled in a jabbering frenzy, leaving Ossen, Jedda, and Sarah to face Kaomos alone._ 

_Sarah looked back at it and froze._ 

_Wreathed in a smog of smoke and foul fumes, the spires of the crown upon its head scraped at the high vaults of the chamber.  She could see bright cracks and incandescent lines of heat running like veins and arteries over its sculpted muscles.  Steam curled from stunted, boarish nostrils and the fluted fangs that edged its mouth, making the Iron God resemble a colossal raging bull.  A hand grabbed the scruff of her neck, dragging her away and Ossen gave a parched cry of,_ _"Fly, blast you, child.  Fly now!"_ 

_The great black bull charged._ 

_Every step shattered stone and tumbled columns, which in turn let loose crashing avalanches.  But even the thunder of falling rocks and debris did not drown out the demonic roar of Kaomos.  The Iron God came on, meaning to crush and burn everything in his path.  The three fled ahead of the monstrous being, across bridges and passing chasms that each hoped would swallow the Iron God and his fury.  But still he came on, relentless as a firestorm, carving a path through the heart of the mountain until Sarah began to fear the stone would crumble down upon their heads before they escaped._ 

_"_ _Ahead, Sarah!  Come on, Jedda!  The gate awaits, over there, across the last abyss!"_ 

_Ossen's shouts made her smile, and she pushed harder, sprinting to the gate that was in sight.  She stopped suddenly when she saw the narrowness of the bridge that spanned the abysmal river below._ 

_"_ _What's down there, Ossen?"_ 

_"_ _The depths of the Mountains of Mourning are not to be wondered at, unless you want nightmares for the rest of your life.  Come on, enough chatter, he is too close.  Across we go."_ 

Jedda went first. 

Sarah watched her go, then took a deep breath before it was her turn.  She felt the bridge bend and creak as it took her weight.  The second step was going to be the tricky one—that was when she left firm ground behind.  She tried not to think of the black waters below.  She could see movement down there, under the surface, and it was not fish.  Sarah knew what fish swimming looked like, knew the telltale tickling of the currents that fish fins made, the brief, silvery glimmering of scales, and the flash of big black eyes.  What was moving down there, stirring in the damp shadows, was _not_ a fish of any kind. 

Sarah kept going, one foot before the other, spreading her centre of gravity over the thin, old stone of the bridge, which creaked and groaned.  Her heart beat against her ribs until she was sure there were bruises.  Below, traces of foam appeared on the surface of the water, and light eddies were forming bleak whirlpools.  She thought she saw the waters break, revealing something soft, limpid, and lime-caked, something that was wriggling with a pulpy, translucent life. 

Then it was gone below once more. 

It felt like the only sounds were her breathing, her footsteps, and the gurgling of whatever was lurking in the water below. _ If I fall in,_ _that's it,_ she thought. _ There's a monster down there, pale and hungry.  It wants to chew me up and spit me out._ 

She was halfway across the bridge.  The water's churning made small waves that spat at her.  Sarah saw an eye, a cataract-white sphere flecked with veins of weed and old root.  It sank away. 

She was three-quarters of the way there. 

In her mind's eye, Sarah saw herself making a heroic leap of faith to the end.  Then, missing her footing, madly screaming and scrambling.  Falling.  Striking her head on the bridge.  Tumbling down into the water.  Into darkness.  Whatever was down there would have her in moments.  This was no time for drama.  This was the time for patience.  One foot after the other. 

Don't look down. 

Just keep going. 

She closed her eyes, and centred herself, ignoring the roaring of Kaomos as best she could, ignoring the heavy slapping of the disturbed water, ignoring the darkness.  Nothing was there trying to grab a hold of her, trying to pull her down, to make her fall.  When she opened her eyes, she was across the bridge—on the other side.  Jedda smiled and embraced her.  Sarah turned, and gasped.  Ossen was still standing in the middle of the bride, facing away from them both. 

Facing the Iron God. 

_"Ossen!"_ 

_Jedda gripped her arm, stopping her from running back. " It can barely support the weight of one alone, you think it will hold if you run to him now?"_ 

_"_ _And what about when that thing comes through?"_ 

_Jedda's face became tight. " He is doing what he knows to be best."_ 

_"_ _But he'll be killed."_ 

_"_ _And we all will be if the Iron God crosses the abyss.  It could do so in a single stride."_ 

_There was a great crash, and it was there.  Standing at the far side of the bridge, burning and smoking, its eyes upon them—its prey._ 

_"_ _You shall go no further, Kaomos," Ossen intoned, barely audible over the roaring of flames, smoke, and steam. " I know you.  I know your name, and I tell you to turn back.  Your Path ends here.  Go back to the Deep Forges.  Sleep under the mountain until the last days of this World."_ 

_Kaomos stopped, rumbling.  The nuclear fury of his eyes considered the old man on the bridge before him.  The fire within him flickered a moment and seemed to die down._ 

_Then he spat out a torrent of magma, sending it searing towards Ossen._ 

_The Wayfarer threw up his staff, sweeping it through the air, striking at the molten fire and scattering it as ashes into the waters of the abyss.  Great clouds of steam rose up from the black depths and Sarah flinched as she saw the white, pulpy things that swam there thrashing and writhing from the sudden heat.  Kaomos rumbled again, deep and long.  Then he heaved one wrought, taloned foot onto the bridge, not yet putting its full weight upon it.  Ossen struggled to keep a footing.  The bridge was cracking beneath him, sending a fine rain of dust and sand into the deep waters.  Kaomos bellowed out peals of thunder that Sarah realised was laughter.  Kaomos and the Wayfarer then glared at one another for what seemed like an age._ 

_It knew his kind and remembered, she could see that.  It remembered the First Wayfarer who had sealed the Deep Forges and damped the flames in the breasts of the Iron Gods._ 

_Was it me?_ _ Sarah wondered._ _ The Flame in me passing by that fanned the furnace of his black metal heart into life again?_ 

_"_ _We must help him," Sarah shouted as she watched Kaomos continue to rock the crumbling bridge under Ossen's feet._ 

_"_ _What can we do, Sarah?  Can you control the Flame enough to bring that beast down?"_ 

_Sarah sighed hard. " I can try."_ 

_Like breathing deep_ _, she thought._ _ In then out.  Out then in.  Let it flow through me from the heart._ _ She tried.  She concentrated.  She wrung her hands.  She gritted her teeth._ _ Nothing came.  The Flame escaped her.  She opened her eyes and couldn't meet Jedda's. " It's not there.  It won't come to me."_ 

_At that moment, Kaomos raised his taloned foot and brought it down onto the bridge with a snarl, shattering the stone._ 

_"No!"_ _ Sarah screamed._ 

_Ossen raised his staff at that same moment.  A cord of light lashed out from it, whipping around the throat of Kaomos to lasso the Iron God, making him scream rather than roar.  Smelted fingers clattered and clanged against the straining metal of his throat, trying to tear away the tightening noose.  His iron feet stumbled with the lightness and dexterity of a mountain falling in on itself.  Kaomos was on the brink, over the abyss, and leaning at a great angle.  Amid the cacophony of shattering stone and the furious roars of Kaomos, she heard Ossen call out,_ _"If I must fall for the wrongs I have done, for the life I have taken, then you fall with me, O Forged One!"_ 

_Kaomos and Ossen fell._ 

_Jedda pulled her away as the mountain shook to its roots as the Iron God fell into the abyss._ _ Everything was blurry.  Her ears rang with the howls of Kaomos._ 

_"_ _Help me, Sarah.  Now!"_ 

_And they were pushing against the gates to the outside, straining and sweating as the old metal fought them every inch of the way.  A crack of light, the slightest breeze, a taste of the fresh, outside air.  They were out, racing down an incline, half-falling and half-running into rocks and outcrops until they came to a halt in a shallow curve.  They looked back up at the gates and at the darkness that could be glimpsed through them.  They looked through it all, at the place where Ossen had fallen into that black river, saving their lives.  Drowning himself, dragged down by the incredible weight of Kaomos._ 

The land that lay before them was that of another World. 

Great craters were hammered into the earth, turning it into a forbidding moonscape.  Sickly white foliage hung limply here and there, diseased and dying.  Everything was failing, hurrying on to extinction.  There, at the horizon was the lone mountain they sought: the Fellhorn.  They trod on through grey days and dismal nights.  They drank water that collected in hollows and gnawed on the insects that seemed to be the sole inhabitants of this wasted land.  They scavenged for scraps of wood and flotsam in the evenings to fuel weak fires that produced lots of smoke but little heat.  They huddled together under starless skies to keep the ever-present cold at bay. 

The Fellhorn seemed to come no closer. 

They seemed to get no nearer to their goal. 

_And when the rain fell upon them in the evenings, they thought of Ossen and they wept._ 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Thirty

Jedda stared into the flames while Sarah slept.  It was cold and lonesome in these wastes, and she could feel no hope kindling in her breast at the sight of the Fellhorn not so far away.  The Fallen One had spoken to her through E'blis when she was imprisoned.  He had told her there would come a time to choose, and she knew that time was closing in on her.  To trust in the words of the dead Wayfarer or in The Darkness That Was Not Darkness.  Which would it be?  This child from another world who slept before her, or herself?  Would this child honour the trust placed in her once she had drawn the Sword of Sighs from the stone of the mountain? 

Jedda was born to Seythe and was the daughter of a king.  She loved this World and no other.  She would fight for it.  She would die for it.  Would Sarah do the same?  Did she feel the same?  Jedda doubted it, even though Sarah carried the Flame. 

Jedda had listened to the names Sarah spoke in her dreams _: Momma.  Dadda.  Kiley.  Malarkey.  Woran._ 

Only one name of this World; was that enough? 

Jedda felt her eyes prickling as she thought on it.  Storm clouds gathered at the horizon.  Jedda did not have to see them; she could feel them.  The Fallen-born were almost here, and E'blis would be at their heels.  Her words were her bond to Him, ever since that night in her cell when she had called out to the Fallen One. 

Was I blinded by pain?  Has rage left me undone? 

"What am I to do?" 

Darkness gave her no answer. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Thirty-One

The storm descended with the darkness of evening and showed no signs of abating.  The earth about them thickened into a sucking mud under the pounding rain.  Brutal winds lashed them like cat-o'nine-tails.  Sarah shook violently from the cold and could tell Jedda was doing the same.  The mud was growing too deep, and the storm too fierce, for them to go on.  Shouts were turned to silence by Nature's roaring.  Sarah fell and Jedda sagged, exhausted, feeling near to death.  The rain streamed down their faces until they were walking blind, and every breath made them swallow bitter water.  But still they trudged on, filthy, bent, and blind as they were, into the dark heart of the storm. 

The Fellhorn was out there. 

They had to keep going. 

No matter what. 

In the shadows of the storm, Sarah clutched at Jedda's hand, but soon her fingers became so numb she could no longer feel what she was holding.  Out of the thunder, she was sure she was able to discern a voice at one point, but it was not speaking to her.  At that moment, she felt something change.  Something went away.  The storm died down a little and Sarah saw that Jedda was no longer with her. 

_The storm's voice,_ she thought, _it must have been Him._ 

He has taken her. 

But she was too tired to do anything about it, too tired even to cry as she had cried for Ossen. 

Sarah went on to the mountain alone. 

~ ~ ~

#  Chapter Thirty-Two

The night winds droned low and bitter, just as they had in the dream she'd had all those years ago.  Only this time, Sarah knew she would not awaken on the school bus as she had done before.  This time, she was running through real snow, clawing and dragging herself up the path ahead.  Her teeth chattered as she tried to see more clearly what lay ahead—to no avail.  Streaming currents of snow and high-altitude fog swam in, obscuring everything.  At the sonorous notes of the hunting horns in her ears, she knew, as before, that the Fallen-born were coming. 

This is my Path and I must follow it to the end. 

The bitter end. 

They were close.  She could hear them over the repeated blasts from their horns.  The beat of hooves.  The scraping of welded iron.  Her heart hurt in her chest as it tried to pump harder.  The air she breathed was thinning, and she knew what that meant.  She could see something rising out of the rocks. 

The night cleared, the moon shone, and it was there before her. 

The Sword of Sighs. 

Sarah dropped to her knees at the sight of it and wept. 

All for this.  It's all been for this. 

It was driven into the snow-crusted summit before her, shining like a fallen star—just as she remembered it—and Sarah went to it.  She could hear its whispers and sighs.  And this time, she understood them for what they were. 

The secret language of A'aron and E'blis before they fell. 

Sarah smiled as she listened to it. 

But the tone of the hunting horns rang victorious.  She heard the sounds of the Fallen-born dismounting and unsheathing their ebony swords.  Sarah no longer looked upon the strange sword before her with fear, as she once had when she dreamt of it.  That was a long time ago; she had been just a child in a world without magic or wonder.  She had grown since then, changed, discovered something unique about herself, something special and powerful.  She had also lived through horror, nightmares and pain.  This time, she was ready.  This time, she would have the power. 

She grasped the hilt with both hands.  The howls of the Fallen-born and their hunting horns stilled into silence.  The voice of the storm shook the mountain.  E'blis was out there, watching and waiting; she could feel him in her bones.  Shaking violently, Sarah braced herself against the ground.  With every muscle cold and screaming, she hauled at the Sword of Sighs. 

It slid free of the mountain into her hands.  She turned to face them with a cry upon her lips. _" I carry the Flame!  And I burn away His Shadow!"_ 

One of the Fallen-born let out a familiar feral howl, which was joined by another, and another and another, until the chorus they made was one ear-splitting screech.  Each of the Fallen-born stood with its sword raised high.  Across plains, through swamps, over mountains and wasteland they had pursued her.  Now, she was before them, and she stood alone.  Sarah held the sword aloft, the metal of its blade flickering white before catching alight with a crawling fire.  It drew strikes of lightning to it out of the sky, each burst more brilliant and scalding than the last.  Then, as she lowered it, she saw the blade was gone—burned away by the lightning.  But there was still something there, a shifting in the space above the hilt. 

It had become the Sword Without a Blade.  It sang and sighed with the flow of the Flame as she raised it against her enemies.  The Fallen-born screamed as their empty eyes were seared by the light.  Then Sarah was amongst them.  The sword in her hands seemed to guide her, thrusting, cutting, parrying, and fencing with the half-blinded scions of the Fallen One.  The heights of the Fellhorn rang with the clash of metal upon metal, and with her cries and their shrieks.  The sword cut down one and then another.  The remaining two separated, coming at her from opposite angles, forcing her to face them individually.  Again, the sword appeared to be aiding her, driving her parries, twisting her about on her numb, aching feet as blows rained down from the Fallen-born warriors.  She gasped as their blades swept close enough for her to feel the sharp wind of their passage.  One of the remaining swords shattered, and it fell back before her.  Sarah swept the Sword of Sighs down in a screaming arc that ended in the Fallen-born's throat.  Its head fell, streaming smoke and fumes, into the snow.  Then it was Sarah's turn to scream.  A cold that was not cold pierced through her.  Her right side was burning with a frost more bitter than a winter storm and, as in her dream long ago, she heard laughter and thunder competing with one another.  She turned to face the last of the Fallen-born, counting the ones that had already fallen. 

Five. 

Then, who was this sixth Shade? 

The creature flung back its hood and Sarah cried out at what she saw. 

It was Jedda, pale, wan and eyeless. 

"I thought you were dead." 

"No, Sarah, I serve Him.  The creator of men is my master now, and His will is my own.  A'aron's sword will be His to command.  I shall wield it, not you." 

"No, Jedda.  You don't serve Him.  You can't take the sword for Him." 

They stood facing one another, darkness and light, one burning and flickering, the other smouldering and rotting.  Jedda's eyes met Sarah's.  Their limbs hardened and loosened, tensed and relaxed.  Then, they clashed, coming together like thunderheads.  Lightning smote the mountain as their blades struck and struck again.  Pacing around, eyes locked, they parried, feinted, stabbed, and swung as they sought for a weakness in each other's defences.  Their swords ground against one another; one night-forged, the other singing with fire and light. 

"I do this because I have to, Sarah.  Venna.  My baby sister.  For my blood and kin, I will serve Him forever.  I will sit upon Highmount's throne and spill Ianna's blood down its steps." 

"You will be His puppet for the rest of your days.  Never dying, living on and on in His Shadow." 

The storm screamed around them.  Sarah stared at Jedda and at the crossed swords between them. 

She's just another bad guy.  Isn't she, right? 

Bang _-dead!_ 

Sarah felt sick inside at the thought. 

Her hands shook around the hilt of the sword.  The words of its whispers were carried to her by the night's winds.  The tears in her eyes felt like ice, and her heart pounded in time with the thunder.  Sarah broke away from Jedda.  She threw the Sword of Sighs down, its blade of flames hissing and spitting in the snow. 

"I will not kill you.  You can kill me, Jedda.  Go ahead.  Do it.  Then take the sword away to Him if you must.  I won't end this by taking your life." 

Jedda sprang forward and snatched up the discarded sword.  For a moment, she held it and held Sarah's gaze.  Then, she let its burning blade flow forward into Sarah's chest, cutting through bone, flesh, and heart.  Blood seeped from the wound and Sarah gasped, her eyes opening wide and then closing tight against the deep pain. 

The night became suddenly quiet. 

The skies overhead thinned as clouds retreated away to the east, revealing stars and the moon once more.  They shone down upon the impaled girl atop the mountain and on the young woman robed in darkness before her. 

Sarah opened her eyes, no longer in pain, and looked into Jedda's. 

Jedda's lips formed the ghost of a smile. 

She too understood. 

"Thank you, Sarah ..."

Jedda closed her eyes.  The Flame ran up her arm, it enveloped her in a silent inferno until all of the darkness about her was burned away.  She fell to the ground, and she was as she had been before.  Sarah slumped to her knees.  Her hands flew to the place where the sword had impaled her.  The wound was gone, evaporated like so much mist. 

It still hurt, though. 

Jedda's lips had turned a dark blue and her eyes were becoming glassy, unseeing.  Her hand reached out for Sarah's.  She grasped it tight, holding it against the bare flesh where the wound had been made.  There were tears in Jedda's dying eyes. " So long in the dark, Sarah, and He was my only comfort there.  All I had was the shadow of His darkness.  So few of those who love the Mother and Light understand what it means to be that alone, that lost to the world.  Venna, my sister, save her.  For me.  Please.  And kill Ianna.  For me.  Set Highmount ... free ..."

Ianna, another bad guy. 

Sarah opened her mouth to speak, but Jedda stopped her with four words, _"We will... meet again..."_

Jedda lay dead in her arms. 

Bang _-dead!_ 

Sarah set her down to sleep in the snow.  Then she got to her feet and gazed back across the Western Wastes, the Mountains of Mourning, Grah'na and the Grassland Plains to Highmount and beyond.  To the shadows of the Nightlands where E'blis dwelled and the Fallen One was entombed beneath the Shadowhorn. 

Highmount was the last bastion against the Fallen One.  Its people, and those of the Three Kingdoms.  They all needed the Flame.  They all needed her. 

She was their one Hope. 

But there was something she needed too. 

More than anything. 

Sarah raised the Sword of Sighs high.  She slashed at the open air with it.  The air opened up, a tear in the skin of it, into some other place from which fingers of a pale fog trailed out.  Sarah lowered the sword, looked at it, and looked back at Jedda, who was steadily being buried by snow.  Her eyes turned again to the opening in the air before her; it would not stay open for long. 

She had to decide now. 

"What am I going to do?  Where am I going to go?" 

Her only answer was in the forlorn whistling of the night's wind. 

She stepped through the hole in the air and it closed behind her. 

~End of Book One~

#

Book Two of The Age of the Flame

~The Sceptre of Storms~

Is OUT NOW! 

Thank you for reading **The Sword of Sighs**.  I hope you enjoyed it.  If you would like to receive updates regarding new and upcoming releases by **Greg James** , please sign up to my mailing list: <http://eepurl.com/vfYf9>

If you have a moment, I would also greatly appreciate it if you left a review on the site where you purchased this ebook. 

No matter how big or small it is, every review counts and matters to a writer because without you, the readers, we are nothing. 

**Greg James can be contacted directly at:** g_james@fastmail.fm

For news and daily updates:

Greg James' Website

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#  Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people for their help, support and contributions to this, the beginning of the Age of the Flame;

Lora Kaleva – for introducing me to one of the key inspirations, Robert Jordan's _The Wheel of Time_ , talking me through my first tentative steps into the Fantasy genre and for shining a light into my life. 

Christine DeMaio-Rice – for creating a superb cover that encapsulates the vibe and mood I wanted for this novel.  Size is what matters, right?  Here's to making the next one even bigger and better! 

Karin Cox – for making the editing process an educational and informative experience as well as doing wonders for my confidence on my first Fantasy effort.  Here's hoping my craft will have thus improved the next time around! 

Sarah Buchheit – author of the _Galoria Hunter_ series who planted the idea of writing something for the Young Adult audience in my head a few years ago.  Thank you for the inspiration! 

J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis & Robert Jordan – without their work, this book would not be here. 

My fellow self-publishers, all of whom are awesome; Shea Macleod, M. Edward McNally, Jack Wallen, Cheryl Bradshaw, Jessica Meigs, David Gaughran, Jolea M. Harrison, Alisa Tangredi, Heather Marie Adkins, Mike Cooley, Cheryl Shireman, Lin Welch, Athanasios Galanis, Danielle Blanchard, Stephanie Abbott, Michelle Muto, Red Tash, P.J. Jones, Tara West, Julia Crane, Sarah Billington, J. Carson Black, Lizzy Ford, Graeme Reynolds, James Everington, Autumn Christian, Tony Rabig, Sean McLachlan, Tony Slater, Mandy White, Sarah Woodbury, Arshad Ahsanuddin, Laura Yirak, Matt Conrad & Ben White – the Word Lovah! 

My friends are my family and this book could not have been done without them, as ever; Ruth Latchford, Jez Joubinaux, Evie Joubinaux, Kris Dyer, Jason Brawn, Dolores Harrington, Mark & Tori Waddington, Sandra Norval, Adrian Chamberlin, Dean M. Drinkel, Nyki Blatchley, Chris Hall, Jean Hatton, Jim McLeod, Libby Cummings, Kiley Owens, Robin Jennifer, Kacey Stewart, Misty Jo Hughes & Ann Giardina Magee. 

#  About the Author

Greg James is a Fantasy author based in London, England.  He has been writing stories since he was a child.  He enjoys taking long walks around his home city of London as well as reading, writing (of course) and thinking up new imaginary worlds to entertain readers with.  He has previously taught English abroad as a foreign language and travelled extensively around China.  He has also written critically-acclaimed horror novels and short stories under the pen name, G.R. Yeates. 

#  Glossary

**A'aron** _(AH-aron)_

The Creator of Women.  Known also as the Mother.  Her soul now resides in the Sword of Sighs.  Her body has degenerated as a result of the Fallen One's poison and she is now known as Yagga. 

**Atosha** _(Aa-TOH-sha)_

One of the Three Kingdoms. 

**Barra** _(BAH-rah)_

Woran Bean's small but fearless mongrel dog. 

Bean, Sarah

An American teenage girl who discovers she is the Living Flame – a scion of A'aron and prophesied saviour of Seythe.  A daughter of two worlds, torn between her responsibility to Seythe and her love of Earth, her birth-world. 

**Bean, Woran** _(BEAN, WOH-run)_

Adoptive grandfather to Sarah Bean.  He lives on a hill in the Norn valley with his mongrel dog, Barra. 

**Brindan** _(brin-DUNN)_

One of the Three Kingdoms. 

**Cag'kh** _(KHAG-kuh)_

One of the Phages. 

Daughters of Yagga, The

Descendants of the Daughters of the Flame – a sacred order that once wielded the Living Flame against the Fallen One.  They dwell in a temple that has been glimpsed in the swamps of Grah'na by wanderers and travellers. 

Deep Forges, The

The Deep Forges are the birthplace of the Iron Gods beneath the city of E'phah in the Mountains of Mourning.  This is where they were sealed by the first of the Wayfarers until Sarah Bean unwittingly awoke Kaomos. 

**Della** _(Del-UH)_

A member of the Highmount Council. 

**Dionin** _(DIE-oh-NYNN)_

Creations of the Fallen One.  A fusion of Fellfolk 'volunteers' and giant carnivorous invertebrates. 

**D'nai** _(duh-NYE)_

A legendary patron of love whose memory is honoured by the Eve of D'nai. 

**Drujja** _(droo-YAH)_

Also known as The Storm that Walks.  Creations of the Fallen One.  Solitary hunter/assassins that can pass through solid objects.  They are visible only as a slight vapour in the air, until they scent their prey and emerge in their true form - a raging supernatural tempest. 

Earlmen, Earlwomen

Feudal lords and ladies of the Three Kingdoms.  Each has their own Keep and no differentiation is made between men and women in terms of rank and respect. 

**E'blis** _(EH-bliss)_

The Creator of Men.  Also known as the Father of Pain.  His divinity lost after he fell from grace, he has become the avatar of the Fallen One in Seythe. 

**E'phah** _(EH-farr)_

A Molloi city in the Mountains of Mourning. 

Fallen One, The

A malevolent being from a Space and Time outside of the Thirteen Worlds.  It is known as the Darkness that is not Darkness and the Black Lord Under the Mountain.  It is believed that it could destroy all of the Thirteen Worlds once freed from its tomb under the Shadowhorn. 

Fallen-born, The

Scions of the Fallen One itself that escaped from its tomb under the Shadowhorn mountain in the Nightlands.  Relentless and fearless, the only weapon on Seythe that can harm them is the Sword of Sighs. 

Fellhorn

A colossal mountain in the Western Wastes where the Sword of Sighs rested before it was drawn from the stone by Sarah Bean. 

Fellhounds

Undead hunting animals that serve the Fallen-born. 

**Ferra** _(feh-RA)_

Father to Venna and Jedda.  Suspected to have been murdered by Ianna. 

**Golem** _(GOH-lemm)_

A magickal construct that can be an exact copy of a human being including some trace elements of memory, personality and speech patterns. 

**Gorra** _(GOH-rah)_

Gorra is the Father of Leaves and the spirit of the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  He tends to the roots of all Thirteen Worlds and cares for them at the behest of an unnamed higher power. 

**Grah'na** _(GRA-narrh)_

An area of swampland that must be crossed to reach the Mountains of Mourning.  Molloi tribes reside here and there are reports of worse creatures residing in this part of the world. 

Grassland Plains, The

A wilderness that was formally the shared land of humanity and the Kay'lo. 

**H'Aoa** _(HUH-eh-OH-ah)_

The healer for a Kay'lo enclave. 

Herb-Sisters, The

An order of healers and carers in the Three Kingdoms.  No man can become a healer because they were created by E'blis, the Father of Pain. 

Highmount

The city-province situated in the one pass through the Northway Mountains.  It has protected the Three Kingdoms of humanity since the last great war against the Fallen One. 

Highmount Council

The advisors to the ruling family of Highmount. 

Hillshine

A high-proof liquor distilled by the Saltwine family in the Norn Valley. 

**Ianna** _(EYE-anna)_

Step-mother to Jedda and Venna.  Self-appointed Lady Warden to the throne of Highmount. 

Iron Gods, The

The Iron Gods were created by the Molloi as guardians for their cities in the Mountains of Mourning.  They were infected by an unknown taint that drove them to conquer their own masters and begin a war that devastated the land surrounding the mountains.  The first of the Wayfarers awoke from his sleep in the Lost Tower to defeat them but the Iron Gods could not be slain, so he buried them beneath the mountains they once guarded. 

**Jedda** _(jed-DAH)_

Heir to the throne of Highmount, usurped by her step-mother, Ianna.  She vowed revenge and swore allegiance to the Fallen One to achieve this when she thought herself to have been abandoned by all others.  She died by her own hand atop the Fellhorn. 

Jez, Master

Innkeeper of _The Water Mark_ and a former Highmount soldier. 

**Kaomos** _(KAY-oh-MOSS)_

Kaomos was one of the most feared of the Iron Gods.  His temper matched the design given to his form by the Molloi.  He was awoken by the life-giving Living Flame of Sarah Bean as it passed by.  His fate is unknown after plunging into the abyss beneath E'phah with Ossen the Wayfarer. 

**Kay'lo** _(kay-LOW)_

A race who once inhabited the Grassland Plains in harmony with humanity.  The early stages of the last war against the Fallen One saw humans committing genocide against the Kay'lo to take their land.  There has been enmity between them ever since.  The Kay'lo now dwell in forest enclaves, the ruins of their cities and in underground burrow-towns. 

**Lo'a'Pan** _(LOW-ah-PAN)_

The secret underground city of the Kay'lo.  No human has ever visited the city and come back alive. 

**Marra** _(MAH-ra)_

A member of the Highmount Council. 

**M'Eoa** _(MUH-eh-OH-ah)_

Commander of a Kay'lo enclave with a more liberal outlook than her fellow Kay'lo. 

**Molloi** _(MUH-loy)_

Once a proud race of engineers and architects, they built the Iron Gods to guard their cities.  Following the war with their creations, they were made homeless and destitute, and subsequently degenerated into the savages known today in the lands around the Mountains of Mourning.  Differing Molloi tribes can be identified by the coloured woad that they daub their hair and bodies with. 

Mountains of Mourning, The

A range of mountains separating the Grassland Plains and the swamps of Grah'na from the Western Wastes.  They were fashioned into great cities by the First Wayfarer and the Molloi.  Now, those cities are tombs after so many died in the war against the Iron Gods, which earned the mountains their title. 

Nightlands, The

A cold and desolate wasteland in the east of Seythe where perpetual night reigns.  This is the domain of the Fallen One and those who follow Him. 

Norn Valley, The

A valley between Highmount and the Three Kingdoms where farmers and peasantry reside. 

Northway Mountains, The

The range of mountains that acts as a protective barrier between the Three Kingdoms and the Grassland Plains.  The only clear path through is the Northway Pass, which is guarded by the city-province of Highmount. 

Northway Pass, The

The one clear way through the Northway Mountains. 

**Ossen** _(OH-sun)_

Ossen was a Wayfarer well-known in the Three Kingdoms as a champion of humanity and a bringer of hope.  He was a consort of Gorra and it is believed that he may have fought the Fallen One before in other forms and on the other Worlds.  His fate is unknown after falling into the abyss beneath E'phah with Kaomos. 

**Phages** _(FEYE-gizz)_

Soldiers thought to have been created by the civilisation that once existed in the Western Wastes.  They are flesh-eaters and have also been known to use the body parts of their victims to replace their own rotting limbs. 

Plainstown

The 'poor' half of Highmount that faces out onto the Grassland Plains.  None of the nobility or Earlfolk live in this part of Highmount. 

Ruth, Mistress

A Herb-Sister and close friend of Ossen. 

**Saltwine, Miria** _(SALT-why-nuh, Mih-RHEE-ah)_

Head of the Saltwine family. 

Saltwines, The

A family of brewers and distillers in the Norn Valley. 

**Seythe** _(SAY-thuh)_

The Seventh of the Thirteen Worlds that make up the cosmos. 

Shadowhorn

A colossal mountain in the Nightlands that is the source of the Fallen One's presence in Seythe. 

Summernight

The main summer festival in the Three Kingdoms.  Rules of propriety are waived in favour of merry-making, drinking and dancing. 

Sword of Sighs, The

Also known as the Sword Without a Blade.  It bears the soul of A'aron and uses the Living Flame itself as its blade.  It is the only weapon known that can slay the Fallen-born and, it is thought (or hoped), E'blis and the Fallen One as well. 

Sworn, The

A secretive order of trained warriors often hired for assassinations, mercenary duties and to protect travellers in the wildernesses of Seythe.  Little is known of their practices and rituals, but all Sworn warriors abandon their former identity upon joining – including name, sex and gender. 

**Sybylyn lake** ( _SIH–bill-LIN_ )

A lake in the Grassland Plains.  It provides fresh water and fish to the people of Trepolpen as well as a certain amount of fertility to the surrounding land enabling small harvests of crops to be grown successfully year on year. 

**Taproot, Elssa** _(TAP-root, ell-SAH)_

Wife of Esiah Taproot. 

**Taproot, Esiah** _(TAP-root, ESS-eye-YAH)_

Head of the Taproot family. 

Taproots, The

A family of farmers in the Norn Valley and neighbours to Woran Bean. 

Three Kingdoms, The

The Three Kingdoms of humanity were established on Seythe after the last war against the Fallen One.  Before this time, humanity and the Kay'lo co-existed on what is now called the Grassland Plains. 

**Trepolpen** _(TREH-pole-PEN)_

One of the few enduring outposts of humanity in the Grassland Plains.  It owes its continuing existence to the Sybylyn lake as much as the traders and merchants that pass through. 

Trotters, The

A family of pig farmers in the Norn Valley. 

**U'Uan** _(UH-uh-AHN)_

A loyal Kay'lo soldier and interrogator. 

Veil of Remembrance, The

A sentient magickal veil of memories created to preserve and commemorate those who died in the war against the Iron Gods. 

**Venna** _(VEN-nah)_

Sister to Jedda and Queen-in-Waiting of Highmount.  Sickly and not yet at her majority, she rules with the guidance of Ianna and the Highmount Council. 

Watchers, The

Selected men and women of the Three Kingdoms who stand guard atop the outermost wall of Highmount, watching over the Grassland Plains.  First sons and daughters of Earlmen and Earlwomen are often sent to train as Watchers. 

Water Mark, The

One of the inns in Trepolpen.  The proprietor is Master Jez. 

Wayfarers, The

The Wayfarers are an ancient orders of male and female mages that can travel between the Thirteen Worlds using Paths.  Which of the Worlds they originate from is not exactly known but legend records there being a Wayfarer who came before all of the others.  He is rumoured to sleep in the Lost Tower. 

Western Wastes, The

A wasteland wracked by monsoons and ice storms where the Fellhorn mountain stands.  Signs of civilisation have been discovered but no memory remains of what might have once been there. 

Wintertide

The main winter festival in the Three Kingdoms.  Gifts of food and drink are exchanged to neighbours. 

**Wyrlsorn, Mikka** _(WEERL-sawn, MEE-kah)_

The youngest member of the Highmount Council, an outlander from the Grassland Plains and an agent of the Fallen One. 

**Yagga** _(YAH-gah)_

The witch who dwells in the Wood Beneath the Worlds.  Equal and opposite to Gorra as she is a being of rot, decay and poison. 

**Yrsyllor** _(ERR-sih-LAW)_

One of the Three Kingdoms.