The familiar overlapping whistle and thud of a crossbow volley striking home caused me to duck, keeping hold of the wiry man as I did so. Another bolt found his side as I crouched beneath him, the soldiers around us withering under the deadly hail. When it faded, I heaved the corpse away, standing to witness the sight of three companies of infantry advancing towards the rise in close order behind a skirmish line of crossbowmen. Above their ranks fluttered the banner of the Blousset family. Beyond them I could see the gates of Castle Ambris standing open and more ducal soldiers marching forth. Lorine had never been one to miss an opportunity. Looking to my left, I saw that the flank of the Ascendant Host had been utterly routed, the Paelith wheeling among the carnage as they massed for another charge. From the din to my rear, it seemed fierce fighting still raged beyond the rise.

  I chanced a glance around the Eithlisch’s stalled bulk, seeing the ground before him piled with pulverised bodies but the route to the crest now free of defenders. Evadine remained in place, however, as implacable as ever. She wheeled Ulstan to and fro, calling out exhortations to her troops and, just for an instant, our gazes met. I thought I would see hatred, instead I saw the stern resolve of a divinely ordained warrior queen shift into something far more human. In the brief span of seconds before she looked away, I beheld a woman bereft, broken of heart and despairing in the betrayal she had suffered. Then, as another blast of heat swept from above, she turned her face skywards and all vestige of humanity fled, replaced by depthless, snarling hatred.

  Looking up, I saw the winged figure streaking down, birthing a wake of fire that flared into a bright arc as she swept low over the remaining ranks of the Ascendant Host. Evadine’s scream was swallowed by the roar of the inferno engulfing her soldier congregants. It rose in an ugly yellow and orange wall that quickly morphed into a thick pall of black smoke. I lost sight of Evadine as the acrid cloud swept over the battlefield and, seizing the chance, I stepped from the Eithlisch’s shadow and sprinted for the crest.

  I stumbled over smashed or burnt corpses, my eyes stinging from the smoke, hacking away a hand that emerged from the carpet of bodies to latch on to my ankle. The smoke faded as I reached the top, letting out a feral shout of anger at the sight of Ulstan bearing Evadine away, my son still clutched to her breast. The charger galloped and leaped across the blasted field of horrors, making for the forest while, above, I saw the Sack Witch angle her wings and fly in pursuit.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Shuddering with a jarring mix of exhaustion and fear, I could only manage a stumbling run in pursuit of Evadine, sprawling to the ground when my feet caught on a charred corpse. Forcing myself to my knees, I let out a howl of impotent rage at the sight of her disappearing into the dark welcome of the forest. Above, the Sack Witch drew in her wings to sweep low over the trees, a river of flame blossoming in her wake. Does she intend to kill them both? I wondered, finding it hard to credit. He will need your guidance, she had told me, so why seek to destroy him now? Unless the hatred of a Seraphile for a Malecite was so powerful it banished all other concerns.

  Hearing the drum of hooves upon sod, I found I lacked the fortitude to turn. It was the hot breath of a paelah on my neck that summoned a sudden flowering of strength. Looking up, I saw Uthren tossing his head with impatient insistence. He wore no saddle and his flanks were streaked with the stains of battle, a few minor cuts darkening the grime with blood. Snorting, he went to his knees, head lowered. I reached to grasp his mane and hauled myself on to his back.

  I clung to Uthren’s neck as he rose to his full height, glancing at the gore-covered bulk of the Eithlisch. He regarded me with such resentment, eyes narrowed beneath the granite slab of his brows, I wondered if he had already begun to regret not killing me.

  “She has to die, Alwyn Scribe,” he told me, his voice still possessed of its animalistic growl.

  I said nothing, gripping Uthren’s mane tighter as he reared then spurred towards the forest at full gallop. Any horse other than a paelah would surely have shied from burning woodland but Uthren sped across the charred ground and plunged into the wall of blazing trees without even a tremor of fear. Embers swirled like hornets and the air thickened with choking fumes, but the great horse bore me on through this avenue of blackened trunks with the same speed he had shown the day before. For a time, the forest became an orange-green blur as I clung to Uthren’s mane, my sword held low and to the side until, finally, I glimpsed the vague silhouette of a galloping horse and rider.

  Ulstan was as finely bred and fleet a warhorse to ever ride the battlefields of Albermaine, but he was little more than a weakling foal next to Uthren. Whinnying in triumph, the paelah lengthened his stride to close the distance to his prey. Before he reared to lunge, fore hooves flashing, I saw Evadine look back at me, pale face set in the same aggrieved, accusatory mask.

  Ulstan’s rear legs snapped like twigs under Uthren’s hooves, the warhorse collapsing on to his belly. My heart lurched in panic at the sight of Evadine being thrown from his back, my son still clutched in her arms. Seeing the small bundle slipping from her grasp as she impacted the forest floor, I leaped clear of Uthren. The child’s wailing cry of distress cut through me like a knife as he rolled across the ground, coming to rest at the base of a blazing birch. I charged towards him the instant my feet touched the earth, then came to a halt as Evadine’s sword slashed across my jerkin, cutting through the leather but sparing the flesh beneath.

  “Back, Alwyn,” she told me, stepping into my path, sword levelled. To her rear, the child continued to wail as the burning tree scattered flaming debris all around. “He is not for you.”

  “He’ll burn!” I snarled at her, hurling myself forward, sword slashing at her head. It was a clumsy stroke, intended to force her aside, but she parried it with ease.

  “Back!” she said again, moving with impossible speed to plant an open hand in the centre of my chest. The air fled my lungs as I flew from my feet, coming to earth at least a dozen feet away. “He is mine!” Evadine stated, advancing towards me. The hurt I had seen on her face moments before had shifted into the dark, hardened visage of a wronged woman. Before she closed on me I had the perverse thought that, in her madness, she might perceive all of this as a lovers’ quarrel.

  A loud, angry snort sounded to my left and Uthren, having pounded Ulstan to a broken ruin, came charging through the smoke. Evadine swung to face him but the cracking of thick timber and the whoosh of shifting fire heralded the sight of a tall pine toppling into Uthren’s path. Flames erupted as it crashed down, too tall and too thick even for the great horse to leap.

  Keen to take advantage of the distraction, I fortified myself with a deep breath of scratchy air before scrambling upright and once again sprinting towards Stevan.

  “NO!” Evadine’s sword flashed at the edge of my vision and I dived forward, rolling clear of the blade. “You forfeited all rights to him when you allied with that Caerith filth!” She loomed closer, forcing me to face her. “Liar!” she railed as our blades clashed. “Traitor!”

  I sidestepped a thrust and attempted a counter by flicking my sword point at her eyes, one of Roulgarth’s favourite tricks. She batted my blade aside with inhuman speed and replied with an arcing overhead swing of her sword. Earth and ash erupted in a cloud as I sidestepped the blow, fast enough to spare myself a certain death but not to avoid the backhanded cuff she delivered to my head.

  The world spun and I along with it, the blow sending me into an untidy pirouette. For what most likely lasted mere seconds but may have been hours, I knew only a numbing, black void. When sensation returned it was with the taste of ash upon my tongue and a throbbing pain on the side of my head. My fingers twitched, scraping soil but not the hard wood of a sword hilt.

  Groaning, I rolled on to my back, eyes tracking along the length of Evadine’s sword to her stricken, anguished face. “Why?” she asked me, tears trickling from her eyes and over her lips. “Why did you do it, Alwyn?”

  “You know why,” I told her, looking deep into those grieving eyes and wondering what truly looked back. “You must know by now. What you are. What you’re becoming.”

  “This…” She shook her head, stifling a sob. “This is the witch’s doing. Her Malecite’s curse upon you.”

  “You are the Malecite!” I lurched at her, uncaring of the tip of her sword pressing into my throat. “That’s where your visions come from! That’s what lives inside you!”

  She could have killed me so easily in that moment, just an inch more pressure upon her sword and the tale of Alwyn Scribe, outlaw, murderer, sometime knight and, I like to think, scholar of some renown, would have been told. Yet, she didn’t. Instead, she frowned, blinking in confusion, the sword point slipping from my neck.

  “How could she have twisted you so?” she asked in bleak wonder. “You who were once so true?”

  “Twisted me?” I barked a laugh. “You killed your own father! You have murdered or driven away every friend you ever had! You have led thousands to their deaths and slaughtered thousands more! You are the Scourge you foretold, Evadine!”

  A calm settled upon her then, the conflict I saw in her eyes fading away into sorrow. “I had hoped you could be reached, that Stevan would know his father as a good man. But,” her sword arm stiffened and once again its point began to dig into my flesh, “I see now that cannot be. The path I walk, must be walked alone. I have seen this, though I tried to blind myself to it. From the fire will a new blade be forged…”

  I tensed, ready to grab the sword and roll away, but a sudden flare from above sent a blinding white light into my eyes. It was accompanied by a sound, a voice, but not one that could ever be called human. It was both a shriek and a song. Wordless and unknowable but also rich in meaning. I heard a terrible sadness in that sound, but also I heard condemnation. The light flickered as the sound continued and I blinked tears to behold a figure suspended in the sky above.

  The Sack Witch’s wings were white now, flared wide and blazing like diamonds. She shone brighter still, exuding streams of light in concert with her song. They bathed Evadine in their glow as she staggered back from me, all thought of murder apparently forgotten. At first she stared up at the being above in blank astonishment, then her face changed with a shocking suddenness. In an instant the statuesque beauty of Evadine Courlain became something so riven with rage and defiance words such as ugly or hideous barely come close to describing how it felt to behold it.

  Her mouth gaped open, creating a black maw from which its answering cry emerged. It was at that sound, so cutting in its vileness, so alien in the scale of its hatred, that I understood myself to be witnessing a confrontation between two absolute opposites. The shadows beneath Evadine began to coil as her shriek continued, stretching and winding like vines, reaching up to lash at the incandescent streams that bathed her. The Sack Witch, the Seraphile, was a creature of light. Evadine, the Malecite, was a creature of shadow.

  Dark, coiling tendrils thrashed at shimmering shafts as I felt the air thrum with accumulated power. My skin prickled and hair bristled as the contest continued, both creatures still crying out their impossible songs. Then, with a thunderclap of unleashed energy, the struggling concordance of light and shadow exploded. Blasted by hot air and debris, I huddled on the ground, arms covering my head.

  In the absence of the Seraphile’s song and the Malecite’s shriek, the silence was vast, causing me to wonder if it might in fact be the silence of death. However, when I recovered enough wit to lower my arms from my face, I saw Evadine collapsed to her knees, head bowed and unmoving. Standing, I cast about for the Sack Witch, seeing a naked and very human form lying atop a blanket of ash a short distance away. I couldn’t tell if she still drew breath but, returning my gaze to Evadine, I saw the slow but present bob of her head. Spying the gleam of my sword nearby, I snatched it up, approaching Evadine on stumbling legs.

  Her head rose slowly when I staggered to a halt before her. My task would have been easier had I looked upon that inhuman, hateful visage from moments before. But, to my eternal regret, Evadine was once again herself. The hurt of betrayal still shone in eyes lacking all but a small vestige of sanity. But still, it was her.

  “You desire to end me, Alwyn?” she enquired, her eyes slipping to regard the sword in my hand. “You would kill all that we shared?” Her voice was mostly flat, save for a faint note of mystified despair, truly a woman wronged by the worst of men.

  Suffering the plea in her gaze was the hardest blow I took that day, for in it I saw a terrible truth: She doesn’t know.

  The realisation brought a sob to my lips, but didn’t prevent me raising the sword. To this day, I know not if I would truly have struck the blow that ended her life. Even though I accepted the necessity of her death, the depth of my attachment to this woman went far deeper than I ever imagined. I could so easily have struck down a Malecite, but not her.

  It was as I tightened my grip on the sword hilt, arms trembling with both fatigue and the pain of indecision, that my son chose to spare me the agony by letting out a cry of such plaintive need that I couldn’t help but pause and turn to him. He still lay at the base of the flaming birch, the ground about him smoking from the constant rain of fiery debris. Before I could stumble towards him, however, Evadine lunged. Fingers unyielding as steel clamped hard on my wrists, not with the uncanny strength from before, but still fierce enough to force me to my knees.

  “I told you,” Evadine grated into my face as she loomed above. “He is not for y—”

  A sudden thunder of hooves, a sound like wet leather being torn by a blunt knife and Evadine Courlain shuddered and stiffened. I tore my wrists from her suddenly flaccid grip as she tottered back, turning slowly to reveal the spiny object protruding from the base of her skull. Beyond her, Juhlina swayed atop the back of her paelah as the great horse reared, her gaze lacking all mercy as she looked upon the woman she had impaled with the stone feather. I loved Evadine, but Juhlina never had and I knew this to be a blow struck without hesitation.

  Evadine tried to speak then, but the words emerged as bloody spittle, turning to face me, staring in terrorised realisation. I wondered if the feather’s invasion of her flesh had brought understanding, or at least a last semblance of sanity, for I saw an appeal in her eyes. Whether she sought forgiveness, or it was a desperate expression of hope from a dying soul, I never knew. It faded quickly, however, and Evadine could only gabble out more blood-flecked gibberish before she fell face down to the charred earth and lay still.

  I might have continued to stand in shocked regard of her corpse if not for another cry from Stevan. The fires were closer now, building in ferocity, the cascade of debris around the child growing thicker. Stumbling towards the screaming infant, I covered no more than a few steps before collapsing. I began to crawl towards him, but Juhlina was faster, leaping down from her paelah to rush past me and gather the infant into her arms.

  “Can you walk?” she asked, kneeling at my side.

  I shook my head, pushing her away. “Go! Get him out from here!”

  “I can’t…”

  “GO!”

  “Not without you! Now, get up!” Juhlina put her shoulder under mine and managed to lever me upright. Once on my feet, I staggered back from her. I might well have fallen again if I hadn’t stiffened at the sound of Uthren’s hooves pounding a passage through the burnt wreckage of the pine that barred his path. He trotted to my side and went to his knees, allowing me to clamber on to his back. Reaching down, I took Stevan from Juhlina before she rushed to her own mount, quickly leaping into the saddle.

  “Come on!” she shouted, voice almost swamped by the surging roar of the flames. Yet, I lingered, first to afford Evadine’s corpse one final look. Despite the current-day rantings of those who still cleave to the creed of the Risen Martyr, I can assure you, dearest reader, that I saw no sign of animation in her slumped form. Evadine Courlain died that day and, if she rose, it was only as ash spiralling on the wind.

  I lingered just one moment longer, searching the thicket of flame to my rear for any sign of the Sack Witch, but her naked, unmoving form was nowhere to be seen.

  “Alwyn!” Juhlina called again, her paelah spurring into a gallop as yet more trees began to tumble around us. Uthren surged in pursuit, and I once again took firm hold of his mane, holding my son close as the mighty horse bore us clear of the inferno.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  I have scant experience of weddings, such occasions being signally absent from my childhood and much of the years since. So, being asked to take on the role of guardian of Ayin’s virtue during her nuptials was an experience made doubly uncomfortable by unfamiliarity, as well as my sense of absurdity at the entire ritual.

  “I trust I’m not expected to provide a dowry into the bargain,” I grumbled, causing Ayin to deliver a chastising brush to the face with her bouquet.

  “Propriety demands someone fill the role,” she said. “My own poor dear papa having fallen in battle under the king’s banner when I was but a babe.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Neither do I. Mama was ever sparing with details when it came to my father. However, a duchess requires a little colour to her story, don’t you think? Especially when her veins carry not a drop of noble blood.”