To Walk in Shadow
(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)
by P.H Wise
3.5 - Steer Your Way
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.
Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading.
Brutus, now a hulking canine form covered in asymmetrical bony plates, spikes, raw exposed muscle, and calcified flesh, growled out a warning to the three horse-sized faerie hounds. Bitch's Rottweiler was almost half-again larger than any single one of the pale, red-eared dogs and had more than twice their individual mass, but with Bitch and I both considerably more crunchable than Brutus, that fact did not comfort me overmuch. More hounds howled in the night, and with them came the cries and wails of what I could only assume was Mallt-y-Nos, leader of this Wild Hunt. I had one spell remaining, left over from the battle with Lung, and then my only magical recourse would be to wield raw forces. That could be potent, but it was extremely inefficient, and it drained the spellcaster at an alarming rate.
The three Cŵn Annwn barked and growled, and the sound was strangely muted, less like a trio of angry dog than like a flock of migrating geese heard from far away. Brutus' answering snarls were almost deafening in comparison, but didn't carry with them that sense of coldness and dread that his enemies' noises did. One of the faerie hounds lunged; Brutus snapped at it, and the faerie dog sprang back. Neither had come close to the other, but aggression had been met with aggression. Bitch was brandishing a hand-axe I hadn't noticed her picking up, and she added her voice to Brutus', accompanying his growls, barks and snarls with some surprisingly inventive angry swearing. It went on like that for a minute or two, and I had a moment where the sheer surreality of the situation hit me, and I almost started giggling like a lunatic.
When the attack came, it came from the sides, from another pair of dogs I hadn't even known were there. A pale hound bowled me over. Flashing teeth came in for my throat. In an instinct-driven moment of panic, I whipped my arm up and shoved it between those teeth and my neck.
The dog bit down and wrenched his head left and right, ripping and rending, and if I'd been even a millisecond slower, I'd have been dead. I could feel the teeth digging into my flesh, see blood soaking through my black sleeve, the silver accents stained crimson.
I screamed, and I honestly don't know if it was in terror or in outrage. I felt both. The hound didn't let go. It kept shaking, kept biting. It wasn't going to let me go unless I made it.
I brought up my other hand and shoved my fingers into its left eye, and ocular tissue gave way with a squelch. The hound twisted, released my arm, rolled frantically away from me, yelping pathetically.
Something about the sound made my insides clench.
I rolled up to my feet, sparing a glance for Bitch and Brutus as I did so: Brutus had a faerie hound by the throat with another limping away from him, bleeding from gashes along its underbelly; Bitch had backed against the wall of the barn and was using the axe to try to ward off any hounds that came too close, which wasn't working very well. Even as I spared my glance, a faerie hound sprang forward from her left; Bitch spun to face it, and then the hound to her right darted in. She'd anticipated the move, pivoted with her hips and swung the axe into the side of the hound's head. Iron bit into flesh, but the fae dog didn't stop; it bit down on her hand. Blood flowed, and the axe fell to the ground.
I lunged forward, put a hand on Bitch's shoulder, and spoke the guide words of my last spell.
A good sorceress should have an attack, defense, and escape spell ready at all times. I am not a good sorceress, but when I'd prepared my array of spells for the confrontation with Lung with Shadowjack's help, I had not neglected escape. I had prepared two offensive spells: Cardiac Arrest and the Tornado; one defensive spell, which I had repurposed into an attack on the fly: the Wall of Force; one escape spell: Swarm Escape. Swarm Escape was probably the most taxing, least efficient spell I'd created, and that had a lot to do with the nature of the magical style I was initiated into. Pattern Magic wasn't good at mutability, and it generally didn't create or destroy by its nature. It could be used to create or destroy, and it could be used in the cause of mutability, but Pattern Magic was most at home when it acted according to its nature: when it reinforced, sustained, and imposed order.
The use to which I was putting it was not one that came naturally to it. Honestly, I'd never have been able to create the spell at all without Shadowjack's help, and I doubted I could do it again on my own, but while I had it, I intended to use it.
I spoke the words. We broke apart. Our bodies, our clothing, all of it shattered into an equivalent mass of hornets. Now the average hornet weighs about 84 milligrams. There are about 450,000 milligrams in a pound. Bitch and I together massed somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 pounds.
Over a million hornets erupted from the space we had occupied, and we blotted out the light of the moon upon the village green. My perspective multiplied, became the perspective of every hornet. I was a swarm, and Bitch was in the swarm with me. There was a moment of confusion, and then the spell-wrought instincts kicked in, and I knew how to move myselves, how to escape, and how to attack.
The greater mass of myselves fled, but I sent ten thousand hornets after each faerie hound, hoping to drive them away from Brutus as Bitch and I made our escape. A few hundred of me died in the effort, and the sensation was one of the most bizarre and disconcerting I had ever experienced. I sent myself into their nostrils, I attacked their eyes, I stung their lolling tongues, and the dogs fled, yelping, into the night.
The greater swarm streamed into the bell tower of the village church, coalesced, merged. Over a million individual perspectives collapsed down into two perspectives. Insect senses became human. Hornet flesh became fluid, flowing back into two distinct and clothed human bodies. Bitch and I became ourselves again, and we did it with tens of thousands of hornets missing. The hornets who had not rejoined our main mass burst into a blue-white flame. There was wrenching sensation and a sense of wrongness; I could hear a cracking sound like splintering glass, and then pain and utter exhaustion washed over me out of all proportion to the effort of what I had done.
Bitch stared at me, her eyes wide, her face gone white with terror. "What the fuck was that?" she hissed.
"Escape… spell…" I muttered, and the effort of speaking brought fresh waves of pain and exhaustion.
I couldn't move. I couldn't stand. The world went dark. I felt myself falling, and then all sensation vanished.
The ocean of pain receded slowly, like an outgoing tide, still cresting in waves but each wave a little less than the last.
I opened my eyes.
Nothing made sense. The world I saw was a misshapen place of giants and impossible angles and colors that didn't exist, and I blinked. The world seemed to distort, and all was insubstantial as a shadow, and I blinked, and I blinked and I blinked until the world made sense and my surroundings were explicable: I was lying in a bed in a room with a thatched ceiling. There was an earthy smell. My brain hurt: the pain seemed to radiate outward from the center of my skull, and it was a new experience. It was my understanding that the brain didn't have pain receptors, which naturally raised the question of how mine could possibly be hurting.
The spell had worked. I'd drastically underestimated how much it would take out of me to reform myself without the full mass of hornets that I started with, but it had worked. It was supposed to allow me to reform from even a single wasp, but … all I could think was that I screwed up on the energy requirements somehow. After what happened when I actually used it, I was pretty sure that trying to reform from less than the majority of the mass I'd started with would have killed me.
Meaning if I'd used that spell against Lung, I would be dead. A single blast of his fire would have killed enough of the swarm that… I cut off that line of thought as a cold shiver ran down my spine. Using a swarm of wasps against a dragon seemed stupid in retrospect, but I'd gone ahead and prepared the spell anyway, and Shadowjack had helped me every step of the way. He had to have seen the danger. Had he taken my death threat personally?
The door opened, and the light from beyond the threshold was almost blinding, and a girl came through with a dog at her side. She was stout and muscular, with auburn hair and a blunt-featured face. One of her hands was wrapped in bandages. I couldn't place the expression on her face, but she crossed the space between us with a few quick strides, drew back my surprisingly itchy and uncomfortable blanket, and gave me an evaluating look.
I was pretty sure I knew her. "Rachel?" I asked.
"Bitch," she corrected.
My thoughts sharpened, my perception grew clearer. Or was it the other way around? "Bitch," I amended. "How long was I out?"
She shrugged. "Sun's directly overhead. Can you sew?"
I blinked, not entirely sure why she was asking. "Sew?"
"Needle and thread."
"A little."
"Good. Stitch my hand shut."
I stared at her, and her expression darkened.
"Stitch my fucking hand shut, Felicia," she said, and undid the bandages to reveal a series of nasty gashes and contusions from where the faerie hound had bit her right hand. It was very bad, punctures, gashes and bruises all across her hand, and and in some places there were little bits of fatty tissue sticking out through the wounds.
I sat up, and my vision swam. "I'm not sure I can stand up yet," I said.
"Do it sitting down, then," she said. She produced a small first aid kit from her jacket pocket and handed it to me. There was a needle and thread and hydrogen peroxide. She'd already cleaned the bites and sterilized the equipment, but she was right handed, and she couldn't sew it up herself.
"Is there something to numb the pain?" I asked.
"Just fucking do it," she said impatiently.
Something about her tone made me want to say no, warned me against just obeying her, but she needed my help, so I did what she asked. I sewed up her wounds. It was crude, and there would be some nasty scars, but I managed it despite the throbbing behind my eyes. She grimaced a few times, but she never made a sound. When I was done, she looked it over and nodded approvingly.
I checked over my own injury, then, and it was… not fine, but well on its way toward healing. Each tooth-mark was fully scabbed over, and there wasn't any sign of infection. So far so good. I'd always known that I healed fast, but Fiona had provided some much needed context for my regenerative abilities. According to her, I would always recover from any injury provided it didn't kill me. It might take awhile, but even amputation and severe nerve damage would heal eventually, and my body would make short work of all but the most deadly diseases, and even those I could survive. The general rule with injury was that if I made it through the first few hours, I was going to make it.
All that to say, I was going to be fine, assuming the headache didn't kill me. Which meant I had just about run out of methods to stall and otherwise avoid talking to Bitch about what she'd done last night.
I let my eyes drift shut, opened them again, and looked at my companion. "Why did you open the door and go out to face the hunt?" I asked.
"What?"
"Why did you go outside last night?"
"I don't have to tell you shit," Bitch answered.
"That's the second time you started a fight that didn't need to happen, Bitch."
She looked me in the eye and bared her teeth. "What do you know?"
I thought back to the behavior I'd seen from Bitch thus far. "I know that you don't think Brian cuts it as a leader," I told her. "It's why you undermine him constantly. How many times have you started fights he didn't want?"
"He's weak," Bitch answered.
"How?"
She regarded me suspiciously, but after a moment she answered. "He wants to be able to walk away."
"So you're giving him a reason to? Showing him just how little control he actually has?"
"Words," she said dismissively.
"Words matter," I told her and she rolled her eyes, and that reaction offended me more than I would have admitted. So I spoke them: words of power, words that made my presence in the room expand, my shadow grow more menacing, the light of the sun through the windows less bright. The act of calling up magical forces made my head spike with pain, but I didn't let it show.
Brutus began to whine, but Bitch didn't back down. "You think you can threaten me when you can't even stand up?"
"I don't need to stand up to kick your ass," I answered. "But mostly I think if you ever want to see the rest of your dogs again, you should stop pissing off the only person who can take you home."
She showed her teeth, and I tensed, readying to receive a charge from either her, Brutus, or both. I had more options than talking and fighting, but I didn't want to use them; I could have Mastered her if I worked at it, but even the fact that the thought of attempting it had occurred to me at all sent shockwaves of revulsion through my brain.
Things might have gotten worse, but at that moment the door opened and Siobhan poked her head in. I don't know how long she'd been listening in, but she took one look at us and asked, "Why are the two of you acting like a pair of boys looking for a scrap?"
The tension broke. I blushed. Bitch stalked out past Siobhan, and Brutus followed at her heels.
It was another hour before my headache receded enough that I felt mostly human again. I made an attempt at drawing a Trump to get us home, failed, grew frustrated, and went out the door onto the village green.
Bitch and Brutus were there, and Brutus let out a joyful bark as Bitch threw a stick. He raced after it, snatched it up almost the same instant it touched the ground and raced back to her, tail wagging. She threw it again, and off he went, this time outpacing the throw; he caught the stick in mid-air and came trotting back proud as could be; Bitch scratched his ears as she took the stick, then threw it again. Children had gathered to watch, and a few of the more daring were mustering up the courage to approach more closely.
I smiled almost despite myself.
"She carried you, you know," Siobhan said. "You collapsed in the belltower, and Bitch carried you to me."
I had no idea how to respond to that, so I changed the subject. "Do those dogs come every night?" I asked.
"Every night," she confirmed. "Before it became a nightly experience, it was said that to even hear the baying was an omen of death. Now…"
"Like a banshee?"
"You know your Gentle Folk. But these aren't acting the way they should. They come every night, and every night since the new moon. Eleven days, six men killed, a dozen sheep eaten, a prized bull torn to pieces, and still they don't stop."
I did some mental math based on the size of the village and the likely effect of lost workers and livestock, and I didn't like the sums I got. "Have you sent for help?"
"Aye. A messenger went to the Prince at Aber Celyn. He never returned. Our local Lord is supposed to deal with situations like this, but…"
"He's not eager to have his men eaten by faerie dogs?" I asked.
"Something like that," came a young man's voice in accented Thari, and Siobhan brightened at the sound of it.
"Emrys!" she called.
He was the same age as Siobhan, with dark hair and hazel eyes, and he was dressed in fine clothing that was notably out of place in the village. People tipped their hats and bowed as he passed. Siobhan moved to clasp his hand, but he drew her in for a hug; she stiffened, and I saw the distress on her face. "Emrys, we're in public," she hissed.
He laughed and said something in a language I didn't understand. Siobhan blushed and replied in the same language. After a short exchange, Emrys regarded me with interest.
"Felicia," Siobhan said, "may I present Lord Emrys of the house of Gwynedd, son of Rhys, heir to the lordship of this village and all its surrounding land, and a damned fool who has better things to do than waste his time with the peasants "
Emrys grinned. "What if I like wasting my time with peasants?" he asked. Just as Siobhan was about to reply, he spoke again: "Felicia, was it?"
"That's right," I said.
"It's been a long time since we have hosted nobility from Annwn. Are you here to deal with the Hunt?"
"She's not one of the Good Neighbors," Siobhan said.
"Oh. But surely a noblewoman."
I shook my head. "I'm just an ordinary…" I trailed off. I was lying, and it was obvious. I didn't like the idea of being part of any nobility, though. It was… it felt wrong. I hadn't grown up as any kind of noblewoman, and even if I was slowly getting comfortable with the idea, learning that my mother had actually been a Princess of Amber was still deeply weird to me. "Technically…" I began, then trailed off again; I had no desire to explain my lineage. Finally I sighed. "It's a long story, and I don't want to go into it," I said.
"I see," said Emrys. There was something of appraisal in his eyes, now, and I didn't like it.
"There's more, Emrys," Siobhan said in a low, excited voice. "They're witches. That dog out there is some kind of hellhound; they used it to fight the Hunt last night."
Emrys grew thoughtful. "And survived, it seems. That would explain why a noblewoman of marriageable age and her servant are wandering the countryside without a male escort."
Without a male escort? What the hell? But however much that rubbed me the wrong way, considering our medieval surroundings, maybe it wasn't a good idea to let them think I was a witch. "I'm not a witch," I said.
Both of them gave me looks of utter disbelief.
"I'm a sorceress," I said defensively.
They exchanged looks. "What's the difference?" Siobhan asked.
Everything I knew about the medieval popular ideas about witches swam through my brain. "I'm not a servant of the Devil, for one," I said. Which was true: I was his friend, not his servant. And I really needed to make a Trump of him one of these days.
"Why would anyone think you were a servant of Corwin?" Emrys asked, and Siobhan made a warding gesture when the name was spoken.
That… had not been the response I'd expected. "Corwin of Amber?" I asked.
"Again you name a creature from the unholy realm," Siobhan muttered unhappily. "Yes, him: the Demon-King of Avalon. Do you have some unhealthy interest in history's most wicked villains, Felicia?"
"Sorry," I said, and suddenly I felt a lot better about not having told them about technically being part of the royal house of Amber.
"I wonder," Emrys said. "What brings a... sorceress to Glan Mawddach at a time like this? Are you here to help?"
"Isn't that your job?" I asked. "Your family protects this land, doesn't it?"
Emrys' cheeks reddened, and I wasn't sure if it was shame or anger. His hand clenched, strayed toward the hilt of his sword, stopped, unclenched. "It is not that simple," he ground out.
"Lord Gwynedd forbade him from getting involved," Siobhan explained.
"And Lord Gwynedd hasn't gotten involved himself, or sent any of his men against the Hunt," I surmised.
Emrys looked down. "... I'm certain Father has a reason for it. Maybe he knows his men can't match the Hunt and is waiting for help to arrive." He didn't sound like he believed it.
I exchanged looks with Siobhan. "Maybe," I said.
On the green, Bitch was showing a curious little girl how to approach a dog. The girl's mother was hovering nearby, clearly anxious but just as clearly afraid to step in. I caught some of the conversation. Neither spoke a common language, but that didn't seem to stop them.
The girl asked something while pointing at Brutus.
"Brutus," Bitch answered tersely.
The little girl held out a hand and asked something else. Probably, "Can I pet him?" Her body language was amazingly expressive.
Bitch looked to Brutus, then back to the little girl. "He'll tell you," she said.
The girl spoke a single word as a question.
"So you want our help?" I asked.
Emrys nodded. "I… the village won't survive another fortnight of this."
"So you want our help," I repeated.
"Yes."
I looked around at the village and took in the sight of the people. A little girl was letting Brutus sniff her hand. A mother was watching with worried eyes. People were afraid of us, and for themselves. An old man struggled to load a wagon. A man my dad's age was staring at me, had been for a while, and there was a hungry look in his eyes that made me uncomfortable even as I couldn't quite place it. There were more. Fat, skinny, tall, short, ugly and beautiful people. They were people I didn't know and who didn't know me, a handful of them probably meant me harm, and I had no reason to put myself on the line for them except…
I'd wanted to be a hero. Maybe this wasn't where and how I'd planned to make my debut, but these people needed my help, and as much as I didn't want to get involved, the people in charge had failed them. If I didn't help, who would?
"Okay," I said. "No promises, but I'll do what I can."
Siobhan and Emrys both smiled. "Thank you," each said in turn.
I shook my head. "Don't thank me yet. The Hunt will be back at sundown, right?"
Siobhan nodded.
"I need to know everything there is to know about the Wild Hunt, the hounds, and Mallt-y-Nos before then. What they are, where they come from, what they want, where they've been each night since the first. Everything."
It wasn't a short telling, and what was told was sometimes contradictory, but the pair explained what we were facing as best they could. Bitch came over halfway through and listened with a thoughtful scowl; I started translating for her once I knew she was listening.
The Cŵn Annwn, according to local tales, belonged to the king of the Otherworld: Gwynn Ap Nudd. Supposedly, their task was the hunting of evildoers, usually murderers and thieves and those who had offended the Fair Folk. They were supposed to be confined to the mountains of Cadair Idris, wherever those were, but they had come far afield to hunt here. Mallt-y-Nos was a fairy crone who rode with the Hunt, chasing lost souls and unfortunate travelers to Annwn - the Otherworld. None whom she had pursued there have ever returned. Other lords and ladies of Fairy occasionally rode with the Hunt, and neither Siobhan nor Emrys knew if any had accompanied Mallt-y-Nos. There had been sightings of at least twelve hounds with this hunt, and Bitch and I had only seen five last night. Which raised the question: where had the other seven dogs and the hunters been?
"Do you have something from the dogs that weren't part of our fight?" Bitch asked. I translated for her.
"What?" Emrys asked.
"Shit. Piss. Fur. Blood."
Emrys gave me a questioning look, and then said, "There are… yes."
"Show me."
Emrys led, and the rest of us followed, and after a few minutes we had left the village behind, crossed the bridge over the river, and passed into the Lord's Wood. The sun was westering in the sky, the shadows just beginning to lengthen; I was out of spells and exhausted, and shaping even minor magical forces brought my headache back full force like a Thinker who's abused her power. Bitch had one dog with her and only had the use of one hand, my arm still ached where the faerie hounds had bitten it, and we were off to discover the purpose and challenge the might of the Wild Hunt with help from a plucky young blacksmith's daughter and her noble boyfriend.
I'd have asked what could go wrong, but I was starting to think giving the universe a straight line was a bad idea.