Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 49 – Ibacked away, the echoes of the Great Elm’s weighted power resounding through the air, drawing my heartbeat in time with its melancholy rhythm.
The forest was healing, the spirits surging out through the trees, racing to accomplish the tasks they’d almost forgotten were theirs. But my connection to them remained, like thirteen ties to my soul, each of them tugging in different directions just enough to leave the link between us in place. I stumbled a step as I concentrated on that sensation, closing my eyes and envisioning thirteen golden chords trailing away from my heart and out into the world. I felt as though I could reach out and pluck any one to summon them back to me, our bond deepening without the amulets instead of fading away.
My right hand and arm were marked with the spirits’ runes and still my hair hung in silver strands around my face. I’d been branded by this place and forced to acknowledge what I was within it. It seemed the truth of those changes in me weren’t going to be taken away with the ending of the curse. ‘Spirit singer’ the Dragon had called me. I could feel the melody of their music in the chorus of my soul as though it had always been playing for me and I’d simply never looked in the right place for it before.
I took in a shuddering breath, fixing my eyes on my sister who was watching me with a new brightness to her silver gaze.
“Rissa?” I panted, reaching out to her, meaning to take her hand and lead her from this place which had stolen her childhood from us. But my sister didn’t take my hand. Her eyes weren’t fixed on me or the Great Elm or the spirits or even the Lost Children who had begun to creep from the trees, their songs now silenced, their gazes curious and cunning. No, Rissa had eyes only for one thing in the heart of the forest and that was the Fae I had so foolishly bared my soul to in this game of treachery and betrayal.
I didn’t want to face him. My heart was raw with the truth of what I’d claimed alongside Rissa’s freedom because I couldn’t relinquish the ache in my chest now that I’d accomplished what I’d come here to do. I’d always known there would be a high price to pay if I were to stand a chance at winning the Great Hunt. But I’d never considered that I wouldn’t be the one forced to pay it.
“Rissa,” I insisted, urging her to come to me but instead her lip curled back from her teeth like a beast snarling at its prey.
“Do you feel the ache in the air?” she growled. “Can you still taste the taint on every inhale?”
I stepped closer to her, catching her arm and shaking it hard enough to force her eyes onto me.
“We need to go,” I hissed.
But as I tried to draw Rissa towards the labyrinth, meaning to run from this place and the devastation I felt at leaving Bane here, the Necromancer let out a low, warning growl and I stilled.
“This isn’t freedom,” Rissa breathed, the air seeming to sigh in agreement at her words, the branches of the Great Elm rustling as if they too had been thinking the same thing. “Rathian’s cage is simply harder to see now.”
“What madness are you whispering to the wind, sister? This isn’t the moment for it.”
Silver eyes snapped to mine and something in Rissa’s gaze made me step back, dropping her arm suddenly while my pulse spiked in alarm.
“Do you know what Rathian means in the old language?” Rissa asked me. “The language of the first spirits?”
I shook my head, caught between panic and terror as heavy footsteps prowled towards us at my back. Bane was closing in on me, I could feel the thick weight of his magic as it crept towards my heels, the ground withering beneath his footfalls, the trees wailing as they died in the grasp of his magic. The only living thing that seemed unaffected by his power was the small tree that had wound itself onto his arm, its branches locked tight.
The Great Elm bristled, her branches writhing across the sky as if battered by an oncoming storm.
“It means ‘homeland’,” Rissa went on, her fingers curling like talons at her sides, her body tensing like a cornered animal trapped against a wall. “Not their homeland, Ferris. Ours.”
“Where do you think you’re going now, butcher of souls?” Bane growled and I jerked around, placing myself between him and my sister, intending to shield her from him – though some small part of me wondered if I ought to be doing the opposite.
“I didn’t want this at the cost of your family,” I breathed as he stepped closer to me and I forced myself to meet his ruined gaze, fearing the hatred I knew I would find there in place of all else now.
Bane’s eyes were dark with shadows and his foul power was spilling from him so potently that the ground the trees parted, inching away from his ruinous touch. The small bones of dead creatures rose from the dirt, collecting around him as they reformed, his terrible power calling them back towards the verges of life.
Fear came for me and I stepped away, trying to urge Rissa toward the entrance to the labyrinth. But she stood firm as I knocked against her, her chin landing on my shoulder as she peered past me to the Fae who had damned a thousand souls to wander everlasting in his army.
Bane lifted a hand in demand, his gaze hard and the festering power which rolled from him making my stomach knot with fear. His intention was clear, he meant for me to go with him now as the Great Elm had instructed. But I had no desire to become a pawn in another game of spirits and fates which were painted out before me regardless of my own desires.
“Let me take her home,” I begged, my voice small. “At least allow me that much.”
Would I go with him then? Once I’d seen her safely into the arms of our parents, would I let the master of death lead me away? Would I follow the wants of the Great Elm and hunt with him for Providence? It seemed impossible to even consider it but did I really have any choice in the matter?
“And what, pretty lightwing, did you allow me when I knelt before you and begged for your mercy?” he hissed, a sapling wilting as he knocked it aside, its leaves shrivelling and turning brown before tumbling to the dirt to be crushed beneath his boot.
The branches of the Great Elm rustled at Bane’s back as he snarled at me, the spirit unnerved by his magic and lashing at the Necromancer with power of its own.
I shook my head, pushing against Rissa who only hissed like a snake in my ear.
“You see the contempt he holds for this sacred place?” she spat. “You see what he does in the garden of our mother?”
Her words clapped like thunder in my ears and I rounded on her in spite of the terrifying male who was closing in on me as though I were his prey to devour.
“Our mother is at home, broken and grieving over your loss – and mine too no doubt,” I said, shock scarring my words, hurt at the way she so easily gave that term to a damn tree when it had been our mother who had carried us in her womb, who had nursed us as babes and loved us with all her heart.
“That human never tried to find me,” Rissa exclaimed, hurt flashing through her bright eyes. “And you know what we are – I showed you the truth of it. We were never really a part of that woman. We’re spirit-born, Ferris. We’re like the ancient ones whose homeland this was long before the Fae and the humans and even the Hags roamed this place. We are among the creatures who are worthy of the bounty this land offers. They are nothing but usurpers who seek their own gains, bargaining and sacrificing to earn the favour of the spirits. And now one of them has gone further, they’ve taken Providence and twisted him to their own designs.”
“You don’t know that, not for sure.”
The Great Elm cried out above us and I clapped my hands over my ears as the terrible sound of her rage washed over me, around me, through me.
When the echoes of her fury finally subsided, I found myself staring at Rissa and finally seeing what I’d been so wilfully blinded to until now.
The Lost Children, though freed from the shackles of the forest, were not running from this place in delight but instead were creeping closer to my sister, bounding around her with gazes full of admiration and devotion so emphatic that it unsettled the deepest parts of my soul. I’d freed them with thoughts of saving them but there they stood, surrounding Rissa as though she were their home and always had been.
My heart leapt in alarm as strong hands closed around my shoulders and Bane’s rough growl sounded against my ear.
“If you try to run from me, you will regret it,” he warned and a shiver of pure terror ran through my limbs as everything coating the ground beneath me withered and died, his power pulsing out in every direction, falling just short of consuming me. I was in his thrall, utterly at his mercy and the blazing fury in Rissa’s eyes told me she’d realised it too.
“This is over, Bane,” I breathed, my voice rough with a fear I wished hadn’t betrayed me.
“Over?” he growled, his tone a spill of ice down my spine. “Oh no, my lightwing. This isn’t even close to over. You took your chance to claim your boon. And now it appears that you’re the only hope I have of claiming mine.”
I turned my head to meet his gaze despite my better judgement, needing to see what I feared I’d find lurking in his green eyes.
Terror took hold of me as I found nothing but bitter resolution and rioting hatred in his expression and I jerked out of his hold so suddenly that he lost his grip on me.
Rissa tugged at my hand, hissing at me that we needed to leave while a blur of tears made it impossible for me to see anything at all.
And wasn’t that all I’d wanted when I’d come to this place? Hadn’t I achieved everything I’d ever dreamed of in releasing her from its grasp? I should have been overwhelmed with joy, not heartache and a creeping fear that nothing was as it had seemed.
I should have been glad to turn my back on all I’d done here, I should have been furious to find the Great Elm was working to bind me into another task, another impossible undertaking. But as I looked back to Bane, I only felt the sting of remorse and the greatest sense that I was missing something vital.
My eyes remained locked on Bane’s, a thousand pointless words reaching the tip of my tongue and falling away again. I’d told him how sorry I was. But sorry didn’t change this fate.
I gave up on any hope of reasoning with him as I took in the feral hatred that blazed in his green eyes and I knew what I had to do.
“Don’t,” he warned, seeing the decision in my expression.
But I did.
In a surge of desperation, I turned and ran, diving back into the labyrinth with Rissa at my side, my sister’s hand clasped firmly in mine.
Bane’s terrible power took chase as we fled, death and ruin dogging our footsteps as we ran as fast as we could, from what I’d done, from what I was, from him.
Echoes and haunting screams chased us into the darkness of the passages as the Lost Children ran after us too, keeping pace and filling my gut with dread. They seemed no less lost than they’d been before I’d freed them from their ties to this place. Something was wrong. I could feel it in the tightness of Rissa’s grip on my hand and the bright gleam of her eyes in the dark. But still I ran because I didn’t want to admit to my doubts, didn’t want to notice any of the things I was beginning to see.
“Ferris!” Bane roared, sending a flood of cold fear rolling down my spine.
Rissa yanked on my arm to force me faster and I allowed myself to think of nothing but the warmth of her skin against mine because I had dreamed so long of this moment and I refused to let it go without a fight.
I only stayed on my feet by mere luck, the path somehow guiding us true and leading us straight back out into the forest without meeting any dead ends.
But it wasn’t a path to salvation, or freedom, or home which awaited us there.
It was an army.
An army of Hollows whose souls were as empty as the brute who had chained them to this macabre pantomime of the lives they’d once known. And as they surged forward to take hold of us, meaning to make me a prisoner of Bane Crownthief once more, not one of them took notice of my screams.
“You see?” Rissa snarled as the Lost Children flooded from the labyrinth around us and fled among the Hollows for the trees, somehow darting between the arms of the army of the dead and clambering up into the branches where the Hollows couldn’t chase them.
The Hollows were distracted by the Lost Children as they surged around them and my heart pounded in fear at how close they got to those monstrous creatures before darting aside and evading them time and again.
“He allies himself with the mistress of Death because it is she who gains the most while the other spirits are weakened,” Rissa insisted urgently, drawing my focus back to her. “She lends him her ear and allows him this sacrilege while Providence is lost and the usurpers of power twist the other spirits to their will. Don’t you see it, sister? Don’t you see what we must do?”
I shook my head, trying to back away but Rissa grasped my arm, her fingers digging into my flesh and drawing a cry from my lips as a burn raked across my bicep and the runes there began to twist and writhe. I yanked on my arm but she held me tighter, a frown drawing her brows together as she moved so close to me our foreheads were almost touching.
“You don’t perceive it yet, but you will,” she breathed, her words lost to the searing pain in my arm. I cried out as I tried to wrench free of her grip again but she only tightened her grasp, her fingernails biting into my flesh, blood oozing from the small wounds.
I looked down at my arm, sucking in a sharp breath as I realised a set of coiled runes were crawling across my flesh and onto hers, my connection to one of the spirits pulling so tight I feared it would snap.
I reached out to that magical tether, calling for the spirit, begging for its help along the chord which connected us but all I heard in reply was a low hiss and the grinding of stone.
“Rissa, you’re hurting me,” I gasped, shoving her back and finally she relented, stumbling away from me with a deep frown on her face.
Something snapped like a branch in the heart of a silent forest and I doubled over as that sound echoed through my body with resounding force, my connection to the Serpent shattering, its departure carving a bloody wound into my soul.
A ragged sob escaped me as I fell to my knees, clutching at my arm as the pain fell away and I was left with a patch of bare skin where the Serpent’s coiling mark had been.
I peered up between tangled strands of my silver hair, panting through the pain, my heart throbbing at the betrayal of what Rissa had done to me as I stared at those same runes which now stained the curve of her bicep instead of mine.
“When you come to your senses, seek me out,” Rissa said sadly, the look she gave me one of pity and disappointment.
“Wait,” I gasped as she started to back away, the realisation that she was leaving me sinking to the pit of my gut like a rock to the bed of a lake.
I scrambled to my feet but was forced back as a Hollow made it around the Lost Children and ran at me.
The Serpent burst from the trees, aiming straight for us, its enormous body carving a path through the Hollows whether they ran for it or not. But it didn’t come for me. It surged toward my sister while I was left to sprint away into the forest, the Hollow racing after me, its rotting teeth bared in desperate want.
I sprinted between the trees, my battered heart too bruised for me to be able to do more than call out to the spirits which were still tied to me, pleading for their help.
Those glimmering chords which bound them to me began to hum within my soul, the trampling of feet and beat of wings racing after me as they answered my call. But it wasn’t a spirit I crashed into in the darkness between the trees, nor a monster risen from death to destroy me. Yet it was a beast all the same.
Bane caught my chin in his grasp and forced my gaze up to meet with his, a darkness in his eyes which made me remember how much I didn’t know about him, how much shadow stained his past.
“There is no escaping this, Ferris,” he breathed, his hand slipping from my jaw and capturing my hand in its place. “If there is one thing my cursed life has taught me then it’s that. Fate has a cruel sense of humour.”
Movement in the trees behind me had me twisting around, my pulse a riot in my chest, my veins alive with adrenaline as panic threatened to overwhelm me.
Everything I’d come here for had fallen to ruin. Rissa wasn’t the girl I’d lost all those years ago, she didn’t want rescuing and now I feared what motivations she did cling to.
I hunted the trees, expecting to find Bane’s Hollows there, the one who had been chasing me had been so close after all. But it wasn’t the dead who lingered at my back but a figure cloaked in heavy shadow whose silhouette was enough to strike terror coursing through my bones.
I screamed as my gaze fell upon the falcon’s head which peered out at me from beneath her cowl, the weight of her dense power coiling around me so tightly that it threatened to choke the life from me with a single inhale.
Death stood watching us with eyes bright and intent unknown. But as I tried to run from her, Bane tightened his grip on my hand and yanked me back again.
“Come, lightwing,” he growled, all tenderness gone from that name he’d given me, scorn and mocking in its place now. “It seems destiny has a mind to toy with us a little longer. And I so wish to disappoint her.”
He reached out towards that great and haunting spirit as though he had nothing at all to fear from Death. And I supposed that was true enough for the Necromancer.
My spirits were almost with me, I could feel them closing in, hear the Dragon’s roar on the wind, but Bane acted before they could make it to me, clasping Death’s cloak between calloused fingers.
We were ripped away into the fabric of the night before I could so much as scream.
Death enveloped us in the folds of her cloak, the screams of lost souls and stench of festering flesh suffocating me as it pressed so close I choked on it.
I was released as abruptly as I’d been captured. I slammed down onto my feet in a cold and barren place, a road of black stone hard beneath my boots, Bane’s body solid as I stumbled into him.
Before us stood a castle carved out of nightmares, its twisting towers and oppressive walls darker than the night’s sky at its back.
A cold wind whipped my silver hair across my face and I shivered at the sting of it against my cheeks. There wasn’t a tree to be seen. The Taking Trees were far behind us, my spirits along with them, my sister lost too.
Bane released my hand and stalked toward the iron gates which blocked the road ahead of us, leading to that castle and whatever horrors it housed.
“Welcome home, lightwing,” he growled, his voice raw with bitterness as he sneered at me. “It’s time you met the ones you just betrayed. And don’t expect a warm welcome; there’ll be no mercy between these walls.”
He left me trembling in his wake, the beady eyes of Death surveying me with intrigue. I cowered beneath her scrutiny, fear wrapping me in a tight embrace as the only living soul for miles around stalked away from me, his body rigid with a potent fury which wrapped me in the arms of despair.
I glanced down the barren road at my back but there was nothing to be seen in the endless planes which swept away behind me before being stolen by the blanket of night.
A cry went up in the dark, one which speared me with a fear so piercing I hardly dared to draw breath.
My only choice was to follow the Fae who delivered me to this monstrous place, despite no part of me wanting to take a single step within the walls of his cursed castle.
With the knowledge that I was certain to regret this, I found myself hurrying after him, the horror ahead preferable to those at my back. Because Necromancer or not, Bane Crownthief was my only chance of escaping this place and our destinies had been cast as one.
