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Cerys kept her hand over his mouth until Emrys raised his hand to remove hers. Pressed into her body, he felt the thickness of her boiled leather armor against his back while her bare arms remained wrapped around him. Listening to her breathe while the foxes marched away, ringing bells every five steps, their eerie song thickening the air yet further. The sensation of the air between his teeth, almost solid, choking him, the air weighing him down, compressing his chest.
And then release when the closeness of the trees obscured the foxes from sight, from sound.
Cerys took shallow, gulping breaths.
Emrys remained in her arms. Didn’t want to leave them. Didn’t want to get up and face this impossible night in this alien forest of gods and demons and monsters.
Her breathing slowed and she spat, asked the face of the goddess to protect her, and got to her feet.
“Where you going?” Languid and tired. Emrys lay down in the brush beside the stream.
She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him to his feet. “Don’t sleep here.” She spat again, warding off evil. “Won’t wake.”
He yawned, knew it was true, but couldn’t be bothered to attend her. “They’re gone.” When he closed his eyes, his head swam loosely away. Dissolving into the blackness behind his eyelids. The faint melody of the vulpine hymn became a sea and he a drunken boat sloshing from shore to shore while he bobbed through seasons of tempest and seasons of calm.
“Up!” Jerked to his feet once more, he flew away from the seas and the bobbing boat he was, sucking in reality’s breath. Blinking to make sense of his surroundings, the blur of her hand and the loud smack of her palm on his cheek rooted him back to the Chalon Forest.
He gasped as if waking from a nightmare and blinked away the throne of skulls and Alwyn smiling horribly while marshaling Rhian to some terrible ritual. “Thank you.”
“Come on,” she said, dragging him along between grey trees. Without the fox torches, they groped through the forest in darkness. The thick canopy overhead kept out the moon and the stars and the wall of trees kept out the wind.
A humid fecundity. A land of green. A dream of life, of growth, of openness and space, of unlimited blossoms spotting the landscape and then filling it.
Emrys shook his head, trying to keep his thoughts ordered and clear. “A labyrinth,” he said to no one, his voice caught and buried in the humid air. And the forest became a labyrinth to him, following the spot of light and the faintest hint of a melody.
Stumbling over root and bramble, into branches and trunks, they followed the bobbing lights through the darkness that grew closer and closer, constricting their sight and even their hold on one another, for Emrys had taken Cerys’ hand or she’d taken his and they followed the foxes round bends and up hills and alongside streams and no matter how fast they moved they never seemed to get closer, to get anywhere. Emrys ground his teeth and Cerys’ thick nails dug into his flesh and they hurried after until the impenetrable darkness of the forest became a hazy twilight with the grey-silver bark emanating a shallow glow but also a coldness constricting their lungs and their thoughts and tightened their limbs and joints until even to follow was to hurt but still they pressed on and time slipped from Emrys’ shoulders, from his skin, though the air clung to him viscous and syrupy, and day followed night and became once more day as the air breathed in darkness and exhaled light all around them and over and over.
The fox candles ceased bobbing and became fixed in place. Cerys crept past Emrys and even she seemed washed in the grey, dipped in burnished silver. Crouching, her muscles taut, the veins of her arms revealed by the strange light coming from nowhere, from everywhere, and Emrys loosened once more from his body, drifted away, and watched himself watch Cerys approach the foxes and he couldn’t remember why they were there, who the foxes were, or why he should care, but the great fox on his throne of bone stood and Cerys froze still and the foxes turned to meet their lord of blood and bone and silver who spread his arms wide in an almost human manner and looked up into a hole in the canopy, a vast circle of stars, of night, a well of infinite depth sucking all of them up into its everness.
The fox called out in its yipping vulpine tongue and the other foxes, these druids, these acolytes, yelped and whined and pushed forth Alwyn and the sisters who smiled with tears streaking their faces, blood leaking slow from their mouths down their chins to stain the fabric of their cloaks.
The four holding Rhian above their heads approached the lord of bone and knelt before him, forcing Rhian to her feet where she swayed, asleep or unconscious, and she fled from her body, from the impending horror, only for the black gloved hands of the foxes to hold her still and fixed in place.
Her body rigid and frail. So thin. So unlike her sisters.
The lord of bone made a noise that may have been laughter and Emrys watched his own hands take the bow and knock an arrow while he watched from the silver limbs of an ancient tree.
One of the black clad foxes brought forth a snowy white scabbard held in both hands. The fox knelt before the lord of silver and bone and bowed his shrouded head.
The lord of bone, of silver, of death, took the hilt and withdrew a sword, pale and inert, without luster, reflecting no light.
A place light died, drowning in the pale whiteness.
A sword of bone.
A place called Home.
Emrys drew back the arrow when the lord of bone raised Home high above his head in both hands and called for the gods of the trees and the hills and the far off fens and glens of the inhuman north to vouchsafe the sacrifice of this human girl, this child, and the light shifted and the branches reached with gnarled claws of oak and ash and the ancient howl of the sister moons and though Emrys knew none of the words spoken, could not understand their language or the twisting of the forest round them, he knew what he witnessed, and he let the arrow fly.
Time dilated. Emrys returned to his body, to the slowly exhaled breath and the twanging bowstring. Slow as his breath, the arrow pierced through the viscous air.
And there. A shadow blacker than the night, sucking in and consuming the light of the forest, of the stars and the moons. The beak of a crow and black lifeless eyes shuddering into vision, as if shaking off some foreign reality unseen and unknown.
The arrow plunged into the wrist of the lord of bone and Home fell from his limp hand with a shrieking whine. The crow spread her wings wide enough to drown Emrys and the foxes all shuddered and they opened their mouths to yelp or howl or cry but the air closed in on Emrys, drowning him, the pressure building in his skull until blood poured from his nose into his mouth and down his chin and then with a pop, the pressure released and the foxes, one and all, were gone.
Rhian collapsed and the crow took her in those strange human arms of hideous blackness, those claws closing round her stomach, and the large bird head staring unblinkingly back at Emrys.
“Rhian!” The sisters rushed to her and the crow vanished, Rhian falling all the way to the ground, to the dirt and the grass.
The pressure released from the air, which thinned. Emrys took a deep breath and turned to Cerys standing beside Rhian, her body splayed there between her sisters who reached down and lifted her once more.
Alwyn stared at his hands and blinked. Raising his face to the opening in the forest, he closed his eyes, face bathed in moonlight.
Rhian hung limp between her sisters, an arm draped over both their necks as they held her up. “You came,” Rhosyn said.
Cerys smiled. “Did.”
The sisters turned to Emrys and the one whose name Emrys had not heard spoke. “Thank you. I’m Sian. These are my sisters Rhosyn and Rhian. We owe you a debt.”
Rhosyn bowed her head and said, “You’ve saved her.”
“And you two,” Cerys said. She turned to Emrys, her eyes intent.
Warmth spread through him. He unlooped the quiver from his back and brought the bow and quiver to Cerys. “What happened?”
Rhosyn and Sian exchanged a glance but said nothing.
Alwyn’s deep voice came instead. “I’m not dreaming.” They all turned to him staring at his hands raised above his head, coated in moonlight. “It was like being trapped within my own body while someone else—some force—took control of me. Like a doll.” He shook his head and turned to Emrys with a wan smile. “Any of that mead left, Birdie?”
“Birdie?” Sian scowled. “That your name?”
“Emrys,” Emrys said.
“Huh,” Sian grunted but Rhosyn’s eyes popped wide for a moment.
“What?”
Rhosyn said, “Nothing,” but Cerys said, “A holy name.”
Emrys shrugged. “Just a name.”
Rhosyn and Sian looked at each other, jaws clenched. Then Sian said, “We need to get out of here.”
“Aye.” Alwyn came up behind them, his voice soft. “I can carry her, if you’ll allow it.”
“Absolutely not,” Rhosyn said.
“Let him do it, cousin,” Cerys said. “He’s big as an ox and she’s heavy.”
The sisters relented and Alwyn lifted Rhian in his arms. “Which way?”
The five of them only stared at one another, the opening in the canopy, the surrounding trees. Without the fox procession, the light bled from the forest. Dark and cold and overgrown, full of wild beasts and monsters and demons.
Emrys asked Cerys if she knew the way back.
Cerys laughed bitterly. “Couldn’t see.”
Alwyn said, “The mead, Birdie?”
“Was in my cloak.”
They looked around for some sign of it but Rhian had on nothing but her thin nightgown.
Sian said, “Gone.”
“Aye,” Rhosyn said.
“Luck,” Cerys snorted. It reminded Emrys of clan Matauc, though he knew they were from one of the other clans. He didn’t ask. Wouldn’t ask. Didn’t want to know if they may have to cling to generations of hostility.
“What we do then?”
All eyes turned to Emrys who asked the question but he met their gaze, offering no solution.
Alwyn cleared his throat. “We’re lost in Chalon Forest.”
“A nightmare,” Rhosyn sighed the words.
“Is,” Alwyn said, “but we’re together too. And your sister’s cold. We can stay here the night.” The sisters rounded on him, demanding to know if he’d lost his mind. “Well,” he said, “not here here. But here, in the forest. We can find some shelter and wait until daylight. The forest is less ghastly in daylight.”
“And the foxes?” Sian pointed towards her sister limp in Alwyn’s arms.
“They’re afraid,” Emrys said.
Rhosyn spat. “Wishful thinking, that.”
Alwyn said, “The foxes don’t bother humans.”
Laughter burst from Cerys. “The lord of bone was about to—”
“What?” The sisters cocked their heads, scowling at their cousin.
The question took the words from her and her mouth hung open. Her lips moved, trying to form words, but they kept collapsing.
“I heard it too,” Emrys said. “Or, not heard. Knew it. Knew he was the lord of bones.”
“Gods teeth,” Rhosyn made the sign of the moon and Emrys knew who they were. It struck him at once from the simple gesture. “Simple demon, nothing more. He wanted our good sister’s skin to dress as a man, like all these fay, and cause what chaos he can.”
Laird Lyr and his three daughters.
“You’re a long way from home,” Emrys said.
Sian spat. “We all are.” She turned to Alwyn. “Where to, big boy?”
Alwyn raised his face slightly and took a breath in through his nose like a hound trying to catch a scent. Absurdly, he nodded. “South, yeah?”
Was good enough.