Chapter 85

Mistletoe

The tree spirit throws the wrapped crown at me, and then darts behind a trunk. The package hits me in the chest and then falls to the forest floor.

“I don’t want it,” he shouts, peeking around the trunk. “Put it in your own hollow!”

Is he giggling? It is hard to tell in the angry rustle of foliage and branches. His words certainly seem angry. What a strange creature.

“Alright, alright,” I say, bending to pluck the precious package from the ground. Mercifully, it seems unharmed. I stow it in my bag. “It was just to keep it safe. I thought your tree looked like a very fine, secure place to leave something important.”

The branches of his head protrude around the tree. The spirit’s dark brown eyes narrow and his face is suddenly solemn. “The finest,” he says. “The safest. Not for dead women to keep evil things in!”

“I apologise,” I say. “ I should have asked first but… I did not realise-”

“It is a rotten thing,” he says. “If you leave it in me I will rot too. It was a rotten thing to do. I do not want to rot.” He looks at the package with great distaste. “It was not pleasant—to wake expecting sunlight and warm on my bark and instead to find cold and snow and this greasy thing in my trunk! Take it far away. Or better yet destroy it.”

“I am going too,” I say. “But I can’t just yet. I need to be strategic.”

“I don’t care,” says the tree spirit. We glare at each other.

I don’t really know what to say. As an ex-witch of course I am aware of spirits. I have even spoken with a few, over the course of my life. Their existence is no surprise to me, and of course I deal with ghosts on a regular basis but a living tree? This is not a soul talking to me that I have extracted with a whispered spell. This is something else. And this spirit has the ability to move things of its own volition. And appears to be able to roam the woods at will.

“Do all trees… are all trees like you?” I ask, glancing around the wintery grove with some suspicion. The pines shiver in the breeze, rattling their evergreen needles.

“Of course not,” he says. “I am special.”

“How are you special?”

His honey brown eyes widen with hurt. “Can you not see?” He turns around in a circle and flexes his back muscles at me. He shows me the branches that twine antler like out of his head and his mistletoe crown. “Ah,” he sighs, apparently unsatisfied with my response. “I am more magnificent in my leaves. It is too early to be awake. But the humans worship me. They know I am special. Or they did.” He purses his lips, eyes growing hazy.

“Who?”

“I do not remember,” he says. “Humans. You know! Perhaps they are gone now. They buried their dead in my roots. I share some of their memories, if I think hard. My roots visit the underworld, from time to time.”

“The underworld?”

“It is nothing to the dead,” he says with a sniff. “I am going. Goodbye, dead woman.”

“Maud,” I say.

“Goodbye, dead Maud,” he says.

And he vanishes.

I stand alone in the grove, Janvier’s phylactery at my side and feel a little strange. The trees have stopped rustling, and the little spirits I spied before have disappeared. I blink, and the lynx eyeball plops out of my eye socket. My vision returns to normal. Catching it in my palm I look at the squishy thing speculatively. If I want to use it regularly I will probably have to sew it in place. And I will definitely need an eyepatch so as not to confuse my vision. An embroidered eyepatch. Hmm.

Looking up, I realise the beastie is still floating high above the pines like an enormous chitinous cloud, its tendrils float in perpetual motion. The dozens of eyes on its shell stare down at me, wide-eyed and guilty like a frightened child.

I put my axe and sword away and show it my empty hands. This seems to soothe it a little, but still it does not come down. Lightning shudders down one side.

“Alright, alright,” I call. “I know you were just trying to help. And it has helped. It’s very interesting, very helpful. But in future do not take any of my body parts without my express permission, do you understand? That’s very important. You can come down now. Come on, it’s alright. I’m not mad anymore, I promise.”

The beastie hesitates, and then descends to the forest floor with nightmarish grace.

“Sorry,” it whispers.

“Apology accepted,” I say.

I wrap the lynx eyeball in a scrap of silk and stow it in my bag, next to Janvier’s phylactery. Is it this lynx eyeball in particular that allows me to see spirits? Or all cat’s eyes in general? My mind turns to all those times I have seen Jenkins fixated on an empty spot of air. Hmm. Not that I would experiment with Jenkin’s eyeballs anyway. Or any domesticated cat. They would be too small.

“Come on,” I say to the beastie, and we set off through the forest once more.

My mind buzzes with the events of the last few days, and the possibilities. I resist the urge to pop the eyeball back in my socket and look for more spirits. I need to focus. On my war preparation, on my siege, on my plants. I can play later once Janvier is no longer with us.

The discordant wailing of my haunted castle is a welcome noise. I do not quite consider Dunbarra Keep to be as homely as my cottage, probably because of the sheer scale and grandeur of the place, and the fact that I must share it with so many souls. However, I have grown fond of it, especially since I have expanded the gardens. The fact that it now houses the Fairhaven Knitting Guild is also a point in its favour.

The beastie and I crest the rise, and start down the slope to the drawbridge under the subdued rays of the winter sun. The remaining snow that coats the slope throws back the light making the scene brilliant. Soon it will all be gone and the living parts of the forest will be green once more. I wonder what that will be like? It has been a long winter.

The beastie stirs in agitation next to me, its tentacles suddenly writhing. It is looking into the sky.

“What?” I ask in alarm. “What is it?”

A dragon descends on the castle with a mighty roar. It hovers just above the highest turret and lets out a mighty roar. Its wing beats are enormous, and the sound of rushing air is audible over the shrieking of the castle as it circles the keep.

I break into a sprint, pounding my way down the slope, sliding in the slick mud and snowmelt in my haste.

Is it Janvier? No. Thank the goddess. Who is it then? Who else would come to my castle on dragon back? Ah! Phylas! It is Phylas! I recognise the shifty old draugr on the wight dragon’s back. What does the horrible undead specimen want? Running errands for Janvier no doubt.

Skidding to a stop in a spray of sleet, I cup my hands and bellow up into the sky.

“Phylas!”

The dragon turns, and Phylas wheels towards me.

I see his piggy little undead eyes widen as he spots the beastie besides me. His new body looks well enough, I suppose. He has tried to make it look more impressive with armour and cloak with sable fur, but it is still just the body of a street thug.

Behind the wight dragon, on the castle battlements I can see Roland and my draugr scrambling to prepare the catapults.

“Crawled out of your crypt for another lesson?” I yell. “Tired of the mould growing in your armpits and decided to sun them for a bit? Janvier complaining about the smell? Or have you grown bored of your current master already?”

“Greetings, Lady Maud,” Phylas says, his mouth twists into a wolfish smile that belies the politeness of his words. “The castle is, I suppose, impressive, if a little bawdy.”

“Thank you,” I say, demurely. “Would you like to come in for tea? Or was there something you wanted?”

“The king demands a tithe.”

“The king?” I repeat, blankly, as if I have never heard of such a person. “A tithe?” I do my best not to look at the activity on the walls. They are almost ready.

“One hundred souls,” he says, “to be paid in tribute. To be delivered to his highness in Fairhaven by the spring equinox.”

“Greedy,” I say.

“Generous,” shouts Phylas, over the beating of the dragon’s wings and the song of the castle. “That he allows you to exist at all is an ill judged mark of his favour. The least you can do is make yourself useful instead of wasting your time with this-” his eyes slide over the flower beds banked against the castle walls “-frippery.”

“I do not need your approval,” I say. “You have delivered your message, now begone, like the good little draugr errand boy you are.”

“You might not need my favour,” sneers Phylas. “But you would be a fool indeed if you do not consider the opinions of our God. How many have you slaughtered? How much territory have you claimed? Does the world shudder at your coming? Are you a glory to the dark lord?”

“I am certainly a glory. How can you possibly believe otherwise?” I swish my skirt at him. “Although, I believe we might have different definitions of what is glorious.”

“It is not me you will have to face in judgement, foolish woman,” says Phylas. “But the Whisperer. I am but his oracle. His mouthpiece on earth!”

I roll my eyes. My eye.

“You are a disgrace to the very concept of lich, a disgrace to your bones! Look at you! Patched and mended! Leaving humans alive! Their souls unsupped! I have never heard of such ridiculousness. But I did not fly all this way to argue with you, merely to provide you with a graceful way to serve our lord.”

The catapults are almost ready. I can see Roland reaching out toward the nearest lever, the pouches dripping with some liquid.

“Do you mean the Whisperer or Janvier?” I ask, tapping my cheek thoughtfully. “Because if you mean Janvier, well then you can stick it up your-”

“Command your draugr to stop,” says Phylas, “and move away from those catapults that they have oh so stealthily been positioning, or I will command my dragon to rake your battlements with blue fire, killing all your precious, idiot watching humans, instantly.”

They really are idiots to come out and gawk.

“Stop,” I shout, at once. “Step away from the catapults!”

Of course, all my draugr are compelled instantly to obey my words. It is part of the magic that binds us, afterall. They step back as one, their hands neatly behind their backs. Phylas gives out a huff of satisfaction.

My face, angled away from the dragon and the rider, gives Roland a large and obvious wink.

Roland who was not made by me. Roland whose soul is not mine. Roland who serves me out of… well to be completely honest I do not know why he serves me. It does not matter. He is not compelled to obey my words.

Roland pulls the lever.

The first catapult fires, shooting its dripping payload high. Phylas shrieks with rage, and the dragon flares its wings, gaining height, but Roland, canny lad, has anticipated this manoeuvre.

The first shot passes harmlessly below dragon and rider, but the second hits Phylas square in the chest. Both are drenched with holy water. The dragon claws at the air, shrieking in pain. Phylas squirms in his saddle, fighting to stay airborne as his flesh melts and drips from his bones in flowing globules. I can see smoke rising from what flesh remains on him.

Cursing, Phylas soars away.

It will take more than a drenching in holy water to kill that one, but knowing I have caused him the inconvenience of finding a new body pleases me greatly. And hopefully it has weakened the dragon. How many dragons does Janvier have? It matters not. I will destroy them all.

“Tell Janvier I’ll bring him his tithe,” I scream after the disappearing pair, dancing about on the spot and shaking my axe. “I’ll bring it right where he can see it!”

“I don’t think he can hear you,” says a disembodied voice in my ear. Right next to my head. Loudly. I levitate half a foot in the air and look around wildly, but there is no one close to me but the beastie, and the dead forest. There is a strong scent of moss however, and growing things.

I grab the lynx eye from my bag and shove it in so hard it hits the back of my eye socket. Ah there is my tree spirit, brown and mistletoe crowned staring pensively after the dragon.

“I thought you had gone home,” I say, once I have recovered my equilibrium.

“I did,” he says. “But I couldn’t sleep. Is that where you live?”

He nods towards Dunbarra Keep.

Humans and draugr are cheering on the wall. I can see a distraught pair of gardeners looking with dismay at the swathe of dead vines where the rest of the holy water landed.

“Yes,” I say, and watch as he peers at the draugr plants and ghost vines around the wall.

“Noisy,” he says, disapprovingly, and drifts off into the forest.