As he stood and made to return to the fire, he felt the Darakyon at his back flex and stretch and come awake.
Oh we should not be here! and he hurried back towards the fire, and saw that he was not the only one.
‘Maker! Halfbreed!’ he called out. But he saw them already springing up from the fire and both reaching for their weapons. ‘Get away from the fire, you fools!’ Achaeos yelled sharply, and they blundered towards his voice, in the darkness that blinded them and was nothing to a Moth’s sight. It was so clear to him: the trees and the buckled land, the fire and his two clumsy allies. Clear, too, the Wasp soldiers who had been silently approaching, drawn to the dim glow of the embers.
Stenwold and Totho were already into the pitch dark between the trees before the Wasps reached their fire. One of the intruders unshuttered a lantern instantly and cast the beam across the forest, till the others shouted at him to put it out. There were a half-dozen of them, Achaeos saw. One was kneeling to study the surrounding ground in the firelight. He heard, ‘I told you I saw a fire out here,’ and, ‘Smugglers, you reckon?’
‘Further into the woods,’ Stenwold murmured, ‘but quietly.’
‘No, not further into the woods. .’ Achaeos began, but Stenwold and Totho were already retreating deeper into the Darakyon. All around them Achaeos felt the forest stir, not the trees themselves, but the blood that had been spilt there, the pain and terror of those who had died. He felt his breathing ragged, his heart racing. The Wasps were following after, though, creeping forward as silently as they could, listening for the crack of twigs.
‘Lantern now, then, and rush them!’ one whispered.
‘Fall back!’ Stenwold hissed, and they were ploughing deeper, running and stumbling away from the sudden light of the Wasps.
The light passed across Achaeos, the sharp beam of the lantern. There was a shout, and a sting crackled out, flashing fire past him. He fled, almost sobbing with the sense of the Darakyon stirring all around, and the Wasps gave chase with a savage cry.
He could see Stenwold and Totho ahead of him, staggering like blind men through a landscape Achaeos could see perfectly. He tried to catch them up. It should have been simple.
Achaeos tripped. Those vines had not been there a moment before. He staggered on, the Wasps shouting behind him, letting loose their stings and crossbow bolts. The dense, thorny undergrowth seemed always in his way. He tried to push through it, but it raked at his hands, tore his sleeves. He turned aside, searching for another way round. Stenwold and Totho were further off now, and he realized that their path was curving back towards the forest’s edge whilst his own was only going deeper.
I woke it up. I caught its attention. A horrible sense of inevitability had caught him. Better to be killed by the Wasps. But it was too late to make that choice. The trees around him were vast and twisted, their bark creased and stretched tight about their bulging trunks. There were thorns and briars everywhere, whole nests of them. Wherever he turned, only the path leading into the centre of the wood seemed clear.
He heard a scream behind him, and he stopped running. He did not want to turn round, but something, some morbid curiosity, drew him to do it. There was enough of the forest to obscure his view, but the Wasps’ voices were now rising in panic, in horror. He heard, ‘What is it?’ and ‘Kill it! Kill it before-’ For just a moment he saw a shape, one that was not quite insect, or human, or plant, but possessed thorn-studded killing arms that rose and fell with lethal speed.
Then there was quiet, and he thought of all the blood that was soaking into the soil of the Darakyon, and he closed his dark-seeing eyes and just waited.
And the Darakyon waited, and when he opened his eyes there was no monster, no terrifying chimaera rising before him. There was a darkness, though, between the trees, that his eyes could not penetrate. There were shadows, and the shadows were shapes, and once he had understood that, he did his best not to look at them.
‘What do you want with me?’ he asked, his voice little more than a rattle in his throat, and still they waited, until he realized that whatever it was was posing the same question to him. He had been so bold as to catch its notice, and it wanted to know why.
Nobody has spoken with the Darakyon for a hundred years.
His people forbad it, and for good reason. Time and dark deeds had clawed away at this place, festering in it for centuries.
There was a thought that was coming to him now, because he was standing, alive, in this ever-dying place, and it was waiting for his words. Nobody has spoken with the Darakyon for a hundred years, so what do they know — what do they really know — about what this place might do? The tales of his people regarding this place were all horrors to scare the children with, but the one thing they agreed on was that the Darakyon was strong.
I came here for a purpose. It was while looking for Che that I felt the forest awake. I am a weak seer, unequal to the task of finding her, but I am standing at the heart of the greatest magic I have ever known.
The night had lost its reality. He was outside time, outside all rules. In that moment he felt that he could accomplish anything, that he could overcome the losses of his race and turn back the revolution. and who knew what else?
‘Give me your power,’ he told the trees. ‘Loan me your power this night.’ And he reached forth to take it.
And the Darakyon answered him back, Who asks? in a voice that was like a dry chorus of a hundred voices. He could not tell whether it came from the trees themselves or from between them, but the sound of it froze him. A voice like dry leaves and the dead husks of things, and the passage of five hundred years.
Who would draw upon what we have hoarded? gusted the voice of the Darakyon, and Achaeos could barely speak. His breath plumed in the air, as the temperature plummeted instantly away. His great pride, that a moment ago had seemed to hold the world in its palm, had withered within him, like leaves when the winter comes.
‘I am Achaeos, a seer of the ancient paths of-’ he stuttered out.
Hist! You are no more than a neophyte. What could persuade us to lend you our strength?
He fought in vain to summon an answer, and then they said, What could save you from us?
‘I am a seer. .’ he tried again, but there was laughter now, and it was worse than the voice itself had been.
None would miss you. You are a stray leaf fallen far from your tree, little neophyte.
He felt himself trembling from fear and cold both. His arms were still outstretched, but the power beyond his fingertips was so vast and so other that he could no more compel it than he could command the sun.
Do you think the bearer of the sign can still ward you from us, you who have conjured us into wakefulness and come into our heart?
‘No. .’ He choked, his fear was so high in his throat that he could barely speak. ‘I only sought. . I was only trying to find. .’
Did you think these sacrifices would glut us in blood, little Neophyte?
Sacrifices? ‘The Wasps. . Yes, they are yours,’ he stammered out. A dry crackle of laughter echoed around him.
And the other two, who now stumble within our borders, seeking a way out? The two slaves — are they also ours?