Sylvaneth Read online

  The branchwych rose silently. The whole glade shuddered as Thaark went down on his knees, a creaking groan seeming to run through the surrounding forest spirits as they felt his agony. Nellas hissed at their song of pain and loss.

  ‘Surrender your pathetic kingdom to Grandfather’s mercy,’ Skathis Rot spat, standing over Thaark’s splintered form. ‘Share in his magnificent blessings, and embrace the majesty of abundant decay.’ The Chaos champion smashed another blow against Thaark’s torso, breaking the iron-hard bark and exposing the soft heartwood. Chuckling grotesquely, the Rotbringer leant forward, one gauntlet probing at the sap-soaked wound.

  Whatever it was doing, the distraction was enough. Nellas swung at the plague champion’s exposed back. There was a crunch as the greenwood scythe parted Skathis Rot’s skull. Grey brain matter, thick with maggots, splattered the branchwych. She shrieked with furious triumph.

  The champion’s corpse fell heavily, the ground sizzling where vile ichor pulsed from its split skull. Nellas went on her knees before Thaark, running slender fingers over the great rent splitting her master’s trunk.

  ‘It is no use,’ the head of the clan said slowly, voice creaking like a great oak bending in a tempest. ‘He cut to my heartwood.’

  ‘You must rest, lord,’ Nellas responded, willing the broken bark to reknit beneath her fingers. It could not be too grievous a wound. House Il’leath could not lose Thaark.

  ‘Take my lifeseed, branchwych,’ the treelord said, gently brushing aside Nellas’ touch. ‘Plant it in the Evergreen with the others who have fallen here. Give Brocélann new life, and we will resist these invaders for an eternity. Ghyran endures.’

  Around them the tree-revenants had finally broken through the remaining blightkings, butchering them with blade and talon. Nellas was oblivious to it all, looking up into the eye knots of her lord. The green battle-fury which had burned there was dimming.

  The song of the Wyldwood shifted fractionally, a new melody struck by the dying treelord. The sound pricked at Nellas’ memory.

  ‘The song of Everdusk’s Waxing,’ she said.

  ‘It always was my favourite,’ Thaark murmured, swaying slightly. Nellas could only nod. Around them the last sounds of slaughter faded, and the survivors of House Il’leath gathered with bowed branches to hear the final spirit-song of their lord and master.

  After death, the harvest.

  The glade had once been a tranquil place, an enclave of lush green grass dappled by the shade of overhanging ash and yew boughs. Now it was a circle of hell, the grass trampled into churned mud, the spiked, armoured forms of butchered Rotbringers intermingling with the smashed kindlewood corpses of felled sylvaneth, dark blood and amber sap mixing in the furrowed muck.

  Nellas passed over it in silence, using her scythe as a crutch. The wound in her side still throbbed. It would heal in time, when she had an opportunity to rest in the Evergreen and channel the forest’s healing song. Until then she pressed on. She had a duty to perform.

  One by one, she harvested the lifeseeds of her fallen kin. As a branchwych it was her most vital task, a part of the ever-turning cycles of the Wyldwood. From the day she had sprouted from her soulpod many seasons ago, Nellas had served House Il’leath as one of its harvesters, plying her scythe and carrying each and every lifeseed fallen, in peace or in war, back to Brocélann’s heartglade – the Evergreen. Amidst a reaping of death she was a sower of life, of tender branches and new shoots.

  As she went, Nellas hummed a new song. She sensed other little voices joining in, one by one, answering her lilting call. She spoke to them as allies and as friends, not with orders, as she would have her fellow sylvaneth clansfolk. And one by one they answered her. They came buzzing, fluttering or leaping from the surrounding Wyldwood, dozens of tiny forest spirits that gathered around her, their bodies glittering with fey light. They had come to show their respect to the ones who guarded their homes. They had come to bear away the fallen.

  Every time Nellas plucked a lifeseed from the dead wood before her, one of the spites flitting around her would retrieve it, ready to carry it with the branchwych to its resting place in the Evergreen. The creatures did so in silence, their playful jostling and bickering suppressed for the moment by the gravity of their task.

  Near the far edge of the clearing Nellas paused, her flock of spites going still around her. She had been one of three. Her sisters, Llanae and Sylanna, had completed Il’leath’s triumvirate of branchwyches. Between them the trio had reaped the echoharvest of the lamentiri, the sylvaneth spirit-songs, and ensured the continuing existence of the Wyldwood of Brocélann since Thaark had been a sapling. But no more. Nellas found Llanae and Sylanna side by side, bark broken and lifeless, their bittergrubs crushed alongside them. She had sensed them fall during the fighting, had heard their battle-song cut short, but in the fury and desperation of the glade’s killing she hadn’t had time to mourn. Now, as a pair of little spites reverently received their lifeseeds, Nellas felt the ache of their felling keener than the wound still burning in her side.

  It had been a grim day for Brocélann. By the time Nellas had passed over the whole glade, the sun was sinking below the treetops and the air was thick with attendant spites. The urge to dig her roots in and rest was almost overwhelming, but she resisted. She was now the only one capable of seeing so many lifeseeds replanted. As the Forest Folk set about piling the Rotbringer corpses for burning, she made her way to the Evergreen.

  It was a long walk, through hidden vales and along the high paths of Brocélann’s wooded uplands. Few outside the noble houses travelled such routes, fewer still at so late an hour. As she went, her way lit by the light of her buzzing companions, Nellas felt the ancient forest sigh and creak in sympathy around her. The whole of Brocélann had suffered, the loss of so many venerable sylvaneth sending an undertone of pain through the Wyldwood’s spirit-song. Nellas could still feel the shared agony in every rustle and moan of the forest around her.

  By the time she arrived at the outskirts of the Evergreen, darkness had fallen. The woodland was restless, still distressed by the violation it had suffered. Things darted past Nellas, their shapes insubstantial in the dark. She felt the beat of wings as a woodland owl soared overhead, hunting. The killing, Nellas reflected, was never done. Around her she felt the ever-present song of the Wyldwood waver, as though the chorus had become suddenly doubtful. A colder, more cutting note entered the recital.

  ‘Stop.’ The command seemed to breathe from the trees themselves. Nellas halted, grip tightening around her scythe’s haft. There were few creatures capable of taking a sylvaneth by surprise in her own woods. None of them meant her well.

  Shapes melted from the shadows beneath the surrounding boughs, taking physical form seemingly only with great reluctance. They were sylvaneth, but they possessed none of the graceful bearing of the Noble Spirits Nellas was used to communing with. Their outlines were jagged and sharp, their trunks stooped, features twisted with fang-filled disdain. They blocked the path ahead, pressing in on the branchwych from all sides. The song of the woodland grew colder still around them.

  Spite-revenants, she thought. Outcasts. Nature’s most merciless aspect given form and thought.

  ‘You go no further,’ one of the malevolent spirits said. He was big, bristling with jagged fir needles, his eyes glowing a bitter, icy blue in the creaking darkness. ‘You are not welcome here.’

  Nellas faced the Outcast, straightening despite the pain that flared from her wound.

  ‘The shadows are deep, so I will forgive you your mistake. I am Nellas the Harvester, of House Il’leath of the Heartwood Glade. I am bearing the lifeseeds of many of my house. Too many. In the name of the Everqueen, stand aside.’

  ‘We know who you are, branchwych,’ the spite-revenant said, showing no sign of moving. ‘And I am Du’gath, of the Loneroot. Your presence defiles the sanctity of this enclave. These woodla
nds do not want you here. Their roots squirm at your passing.’

  ‘Are you delirious with barkrot?’ Nellas snapped. ‘These little spites with me carry the very future of this Wyldwood. You have no right to impede us.’

  ‘You carry corruption. We can feel the taint that infects you. We cannot allow you to spread it to the Evergreen. Whether you are aware of it or not, you could bring about the destruction of the heartglade and the death of the whole forest.’

  Nellas shook her head angrily, leaves rustling. ‘You refer to my wound? It was earned today in battle with those who would defile these sacred glades. I did not see you or your kindred there when Lord Thaark was felled.’

  ‘That does not mean we weren’t present,’ Du’gath countered, taking a step closer to Nellas. He stretched out one jagged talon, moving to touch her splintered side. The branchwych darted back instinctively, hissing as the sudden movement sent a pulse of pain through her body. She felt her anger flare.

  ‘It won’t heal,’ Du’gath said. ‘It is infected with the rot of the Great Corruptor. If you enter the Evergreen you may pass the taint on to the saplings there.’

  ‘If I don’t enter, the lamentiri will wither and be lost,’ Nellas countered. ‘Make way for me, Outcast. Unless you wish to see this Wyldwood brought to ruin.’

  ‘You know not what you carry,’ the spite-revenant said. ‘But I cannot bar a branchwych from her own glade. Tread with care, Nellas the Harvester. We will be watching you.’

  The spite-revenants receded back into the darkness, their bitterness lingering on the night air. Nellas continued up the path, until the final branches parted before her.

  The Evergreen, Brocélann’s heart, lay ahead. A clearing at the peak of the Wyldwood’s uplands, at its centre stood the great Kingstree, the oldest oak in the forest. It was here that the lords of Brocélann’s noble families gathered in council and mustered the Wargrove in times of conflict. It was also the focal point of the forest’s combined memory-echoes, the well that collected the reverberations of House Il’leath’s many life songs. Some, like the melodies of the Kingstree itself, were as old as the Jade Kingdoms’ deepest roots, while those soulpod groves newly planted in the shade of the great oak had only just begun to add their own cadence to the forest’s choir. Through them, Ghyran endured.

  At night the clearing space was lit by the flickering of a thousand fireflies, and the colourful flashes that marked the passage of lesser spites weaving darts of light among the shadows of soulpod saplings and thick wildflowers. Nellas began to murmur her greetings to the many forest spirits as she stepped into the clearing, brushing gently past fresh shoots and leaves. As she did so more spites fluttered to her, perching in her branches, their tiny songs full of concern.

  ‘Do not worry yourselves, little lights,’ the branchwych murmured gently to them. ‘I will heal. Many others this day will not.’

  As the spites that came to greet Nellas wove among those already carrying the lifeseeds, their songs melded into a mournful chorus. It was a tale of passing and of withering, of falling leaves and dry, dead wood. Nellas let it play out around her as she began the replanting.

  Each of the lifeseeds had its place, a soulpod in the Evergreen. Those who had been Forest Folk, the dryads and the branchwraiths, were planted among those that formed a great grove arcing around the clearing’s edge, nearest to the trees which grew thick all around. The tree-revenants and the other members of the noble houses were planted among the pods closer to the clearing’s heart, ranked by their dedication to each of the Wyldwood’s ever-changing seasons. Then, nearest of all to Brocélann’s heartwood, in the shade of the mighty Kingstree itself, the treelords were laid to their final rest, the lamentiri of all planted in the fertile soil around them, their echo-memories allowed to rejoin the great chorus of the Wyldwood.

  Not even the Everqueen knew what form, great or small, any of the lifeseeds would take when they sprouted once more from their soulpods. But regardless, all would serve the natural cycles. Nellas planted Thaark last of all, among the very roots of the Kingstree. The flourishing soulpods round about the old oak would take both strength and wisdom from its presence, and from the same soil new life would one day join the ranks of the sylvaneth.

  As she nestled Thaark’s seed in the knotted core of the shining soulpod, Nellas swayed. Her exhaustion was coming close to overwhelming her. The harsh words of the spite-revenant returned unbidden, disrupting the mourning of the spites and the gentle songs she sang to the fresh seedlings. Corruption. Taint. She was infected. Her wound still throbbed, and every step brought with it a deep, aching pain. The growth song of the Evergreen called to her, promising the chance to rest and heal, but she pushed it gently from her mind. She had one more duty still to perform. Sensing her distress, the spites around her fluttered and darted to and fro.

  Thaark’s seed safely buried, she took one of the lesser tracks out of the clearing, leaving the Evergreen’s hum of renewal behind her. The darting lights of the spites lit her way, guiding her faithfully down a steep, twisting path tangled with briars and thorns. As she went, the number of spites multiplied, until the whole Wyldwood seemed to be illuminated with buzzing, kaleidoscopic colour, the flying forest spirits dancing and spinning around, over and under one another with glittering, preternatural grace.

  She paused at the edge of the path, beneath the boughs of a soaring beech tree. Its branches were laden with small sacks, around which the creatures dashed and darted. They were cocoons, each one bearing within it the germinations of a new forest spirit. Nellas reached out and delicately brushed one of the larger sacks, its skin black and mottled with orange blotches. It was ripe, close to hatching. As she came into contact with it, she prayed to the spirits of Ghyran that she would have a new bittergrub to accompany her. Her song throbbed through the cocoon, binding the small creature’s first memories to her own, imprinting on it the work of the Harvester. The loss of Nellas’ former grub, and the lack of the soothing, simple counterpoint of its little spirit-song, tugged at the branchwych’s subconscious. Just one more pain for the day’s tally, both mental and physical.

  She no longer had the strength to return to the Evergreen. Instead, she walked a little way into the forest and planted her roots, letting her mind join the wider thoughts of the Wyldwood. As her consciousness fragmented, her last memory was of Thaark, and his final moments.

  In the surrounding darkness, the Outcasts watched her, silent, waiting.

  Realisation struck her. It was time. She pulled her scattered thoughts together, easing the forest’s drowsy night-time murmur to the edge of her thoughts. It was right that she witness this. The first song it should hear ought to be her own.

  She returned to the beech, scythe in hand. The spites had gathered, adorning the boughs of the tree with shining, bickering brilliance. They crooned and fluttered as she appeared, excited at what was about to take place.

  The black-and-orange cocoon stirred beneath its branch. She reached out a hand and touched it, twigs splayed. Through the fragile membrane, she could feel warmth and the squirming pulse of fresh life. Yes, she thought. It was time.

  She withdrew her hand as a split appeared in the sack, oozing a thick, clear substance. The watching spites chittered all the louder, pushing and shoving one another as they tried to get a better view. The hatching of a new bittergrub was an uncommon occurrence. She prayed to the Everqueen that her new companion recognised her.

  There was a pop, and the cocoon burst. A flood of green-grey slime poured from the ruptured sack, splattering the beech’s roots. With it came a thin, segmented form, gripping onto the branch it had hatched from with vicious pincers. A vile stink filled the cool forest air.

  She knew immediately this was no bittergrub. It only bore a single segmented black eye, and hissing, acidic toxins dripped from its wicked mandibles. Its body was worm-like and its flesh translucent, exposing inner organs that were ri
ddled with pulsing, yellow veins and swollen by globules of raw filth.

  As the plague wyrm uncoiled, the attending spites shrieked with terror, scattering in a great, roiling cloud. She found herself rooted to the spot, frozen in a moment of horror as she understood that the rot had reached the very heart of the forest. The Outcasts had been right. The monstrosity that had hatched from the Wyldwood cocoon hissed at her and lunged, its slime-coated pincers snapping–

  Nellas!

  Her thoughts returned like a springsfed flood. She gasped and twitched, the first sensation that of the pain in her side, her second the realisation that at some time during the night she’d fallen, and now lay among the tangled thorns and bracken near the beech tree.

  The bittergrub. A nightmare or a vision – she couldn’t tell, but the memory of the vile creature that had hatched so close to the forest’s heartglade made her branches shudder. She tried to rise. The pain of her wound was worse than it had been the night before. Not only had the splintered bark refused to heal, but now dark veins criss-crossed the injury, spreading like an ugly latticework along the bottom half of her trunk.

  The accusations of the spite-revenant came back to her. She was infected. She was spreading the Rotbringer’s plague to Brocélann. The nightmare made her shudder again. Then she remembered what had woken her.

  The voice of Thoaken of the Blackroot, snapping and splintering with a rare urgency.

  She dragged herself up by her scythe, body trembling. Light was filtering through the forest canopy. It was well after dawn, she realised. The Wyldwood was quiet and still, as though the forest spirits around her were straining to overhear something momentous.

  My lord, Nellas thought, letting the shoots of her mind quest out through the woodland and join the wider spirit-song. There, at its heart, she found him, along with the other treelords. They were gathered at the Kingstree. That could only mean an impromptu council had been called.

  Where are you, Nellas? The treelord ancient’s creaking tone filled her thoughts. We have summoned the noble house to a moot. Grave news has reached us from beyond the treeline.