Morwen dashed after him with Szat holding her hair as it streamed behind her. He was already rounding the first turn of the stairwell as she burst into the tower. She bounded up the stairs two at a time.
“Stop, you fool,” she puffed tugging the back of his shirt. “He’s a forest god just like Blodwen, right. That means we can’t fight him this way. We have to fell his lifetree as you felled Blodwen’s.”
Goron wheeled round, eyes blazing. “Stop harping on! I told you it was an accident, and if you hadn’t put that curse on me, it would never have happened.”
“I never cursed you, I just said I did.” Morwen couldn’t look Goron in the eyes.
“What!” Goron roared. He was two steps above her and looked like an enraged giant.
“Shh, keep your voice down. I cursed my sister with her own flesh. She doesn’t know shadow speak, so she had no idea. I’ve always hated that bitch. She got all the attention.”
“You really are a horrible person.”
Morwen shrugged. “I’m starting to realise that.”
“What did you curse her with?”
“Oh, nothing too horrible, bad acne and breath that smells like a privy.”
Goron’s lips twitched, then he burst into laughter. Morwen grinned up at him. The laugh was cut short, and Goron’s eyes narrowed. “You mean being raped by the slaug queen and killing Blodwen was my fault?”
“Yes.” She kept grinning.
“Oh.” The giant, deflated, slid halfway down the wall. “So, where is this tree of yours? We’re in the middle of a forest in case you didn’t notice.”
Morwen couldn’t resist a smirk. “We’ve been living under it all our lives.”
“The Wichsault tree!”
“The very same.”
They gathered in the great hall, all one hundred and eighty-six survivors. Many were too weak to walk by themselves and relied on the stronger ones to carry them. Goron would not recognize his sergeant. Her skin was sallow and patchy, and her eyes were pebbles of dull light at the bottom of a well. Her muscles had begun to sag as if they were melting. The dark rot had nearly triumphed over her body.
The number of poisonous clouds had increased dramatically in recent days. The air was thick with its acrid stench, and black clumps of the mould that came with it clung to the masonry. She lowered the stretcher she was dragging and joined the emaciated occupant in a forlorn moan. She regretted it instantly. Her lungs felt as if they were full of nails.
“You should have got someone else to help,” Anwen chided.
Jasin winced at the reek of Anwen’s breath. It smelled like a latrine after one of Goron’s infamous feasts. The skin on her face, once glowing and unblemished, was pasty and covered in acorn-sized zits.
“What does it matter now?”
“I guess it doesn’t, not now.” Anwen scratched at her cheek. One of the zits ruptured, and its curd-like filling oozed across her face like a pale worm.
Goron wouldn’t look twice at his once betrothed now. Jasin looked around, not that there was much else to choose from. I guess that puts me at the top of his list. She laughed and reproached herself immediately. Sharp, burning twinges, as if the nails inside were rattling around, stabbed into her lungs. She would no sooner settle down with a man like Goron than she would pick her teeth with her sword. Where was he anyway? Probably naked in some cave with that insidious warlock. “Is that everybody?” Jasin said surveying the collection of wretches.
“Yes, every soul in the castle.” Anwen’s eyes welled with tears.
Jasin thumped Anwen on the shoulder, making her stagger to regain her balance. She didn’t do affection very well. “That’s it then.” She reached among the mugs for the jar on the banquet table and read the label, “Killer’s Eye.” The jar was small and only half full of the deadly leaves. “Are you sure this will be enough?”
Anwen supressed a sob. “The book said one pinch is enough.”
Jasin flipped the lid on a barrel of ale with her sword, emptied the jar’s contents inside, and carefully stirred the concoction with her weapon. “Poison’s up,” she yelled.
A silent line of smiles formed before her. All the survivors were tired of suffering. Jasin filled the mugs and gave Anwen the last.
“You’re not having any?” Anwen asked.
“A warrior’s death for me.” She pulled the sword from its scabbard. It glistened in the pale candlelight, still wet with ale. She would never have put a wet sword in the scabbard before last night. That was when Anwen, who had taken on Morwen’s mantle of tending to the sick and dying, had approached her. The castle’s inhabitants had decided unanimously that nobody wanted to go on. It took somebody else to tell her what she already knew. Jasin too wanted to die.
“You know, I still love him.”
“Who?” Jasin said. She was distracted wondering how it would feel to stab herself.
“Goron, of course. If he’d come back, I was going to ask Morwen to lift the curse so we could be married.” Anwen flicked back her straw-brittle hair.
The memory of that beautiful girl flashed in Jasin’s head, and she felt sad. “You would have made a handsome couple,” she lied. Jasin realised how still and silent everybody else was.
Anwen must have too, for she raised the mug to her lips and sipped. She shuddered and screwed up her face at the bitter draught.
“I think it works better if you drink it fast.”
“Oh, of course.”
There were no guards in the gatehouse and nor was it barred. There would be time for reprimands later. Goron wrenched open the door, and he and Morwen sprinted through the entrance to the central courtyard and the lifetree. Flakes of masonry crunched under their feet and echoed in the silence. Goron’s axe cut deep into the trunk. Dark red sap, as thick as porridge, bubbled from the wound. Morwen was right. One hundred more strokes, an abattoir of blood, and
