Cursed, p.37
Cursed, page 37
Serilda sucked in a slow breath, understanding finally striking her. “You said that you’re Hulda-blessed,” she said. “This is your gift. You weave tapestries that tell the future.”
“A possible future,” Erlen clarified. “I make good use of them when I can. It’s how I knew the dark ones were returning to Gravenstone, otherwise we never could have prepared like we did. Hiding away for weeks without being discovered wasn’t just luck.”
Serilda’s legs felt suddenly weak and she slumped onto the step of a mausoleum. “The tapestry with the seven gods.” Her gaze darted up toward Tyrr. “It shows that he will capture all seven. And…” Her lips quivered. “And the one that showed Perchta holding my child…”
“Perchta sometimes,” said Erlen. “But sometimes you. You see? That future isn’t decided yet. Once the future is permanent, the tapestry will be unchangeable, too.” She frowned. “As for the one depicting the seven godly beasts … that one has never changed. I fear it’s inevitable.”
“No!” said Serilda. She swept her hand toward Tyrr. “We rescued Tyrr, and the Erlking doesn’t have Wyrdith, yet.”
Erlen shrugged. “We don’t know when it’s meant to happen. I wove that tapestry more than two hundred years ago, and I’ve never known when it would come to pass. But I am certain that it will.”
Serilda studied the princess, amazed at her gift. “There’s a tapestry in Adalheid. It shows a garden party, with the two of you and your parents—the king and queen. Except, the king and queen are dead. Depicted as skeletons.” She cringed, wishing there were a gentler way to talk about this. “Do you think maybe it was one of yours?”
Erlen paled. “I … don’t remember that.” She picked at the lace cuff of her nightgown. “But it might have been, yes.”
“That’s awful,” murmured Gild. “You must have been so young when you wove it. Do you think you knew what it meant? That it was … inevitable? That our parents would be killed and we would be … whatever we are.”
Erlen shrugged. “I suppose we’ll never know.”
Serilda pursed her lips.
Had Gild known what it meant? Had their parents? Or had the young princess been so horrified she hadn’t even shown it to them?
It did explain why the tapestry seemed to glow on the mortal side of the veil. Why it had not been destroyed by the basilisk’s venom. It really was crafted of magic. A god-blessed tapestry.
Suddenly, Tyrr launched to their feet on top of the gravestone. “Nachtkrapp!”
Serilda gasped and stood, reaching for the sword at her hip only to remember it had been lost inside the castle.
A beat of wings was followed by a large black bird soaring toward them.
Tyrr lifted the broken stick over one shoulder, preparing to throw it. “Not as good as a bow,” they muttered, “but it will do.”
“Wait!” screamed Erlen. “Don’t hurt it!”
Tyrr hesitated.
The nachtkrapp cawed shrilly and dropped straight into the princess’s arms.
“Helgard!” cried the princess. “You’re all right!” She tenderly stroked the bird’s wings.
The bird cawed and pressed the top of its head affectionately against the princess’s palm.
Then, suddenly, the foliage of the nearby oak tree began to tremble. More creatures emerged, squawking and hissing.
The princess released a cry of delight as the creatures surrounded her. “Udo! Tilly! Wendelina! You’re here!” She set the nachtkrapp down on a tombstone and held out her arms to the nearest monster—a small, shaggy wood elf—then smoothed the fur of a feldgeist that would have looked like a plain orange cat if it weren’t for the crackles of lightning that occasionally flickered along its tail. “Oh—Pim! You’re hurt!” Erlen fell to her knees before a small drude with a broken wing. “Did this happen during the fight with the dark ones? You poor sausage. We’re going to have to rebreak the bone to reset it properly.”
The drude hissed and ducked away.
“I know, I know. We won’t do it now. We’ll need wrapping first, and something to use as a splint. But it will have to be done, and I expect you to be brave.”
“Erlen,” said Serilda, “how did they find you?”
“These are my subjects. We are connected by our very souls,” said Erlen. “They will always find me.”
Tyrr made a doubtful noise in their throat. “More likely, they were waiting in the woods, and they smelled her coming out of the castle.”
Erlen stuck her tongue out at them.
“Which means the hunt will be able to find us pretty easily, too.” Serilda glanced up at the sky, where clouds had partially covered the full Hunter’s Moon. “They could be on their way to Adalheid now.”
“Or,” said Gild, “they’re on the hunt for Wyrdith.”
Serilda pressed her lips together. If Erlen was right, and it was inevitable that the Erlking would eventually capture all seven gods, then what was the point of trying to find Wyrdith first? It seemed the Erlking’s wicked plan couldn’t be stopped.
But there was still the matter of the wish. Of Wyrdith owing Serilda a favor, whether or not they knew it.
Her fate wasn’t sealed. She could still reclaim her body and her child. But she would have to find Wyrdith first.
“Wait,” said Serilda, tilting her head to one side. “Your tapestries. You said that the future in which the Erlking captures all seven gods is inevitable, but what about the future in which the Erlking and Perchta are sent back to Verloren?”
Erlen plopped down in the middle of the path, allowing the monsters to gather around her, not unlike how the five children had used to gather around Serilda when she told them tales. “I take it you didn’t spend much time studying that tapestry?”
Serilda grimaced. “I found it rather disturbing. So, no. I guess not.”
“Disturbing?” said the princess. “I always thought it was my best work. But if you had seen both depictions, then you would know that in certain lights it showed Erlkönig and Perchta in Verloren. In other lights … it showed them in Gravenstone. Not being tortured by monsters, but rather … being served and waited on.” She sighed glumly. “By humans.”
Serilda shut her eyes, discouraged.
“But that means there’s still hope,” said Gild, drawing her attention back to him. “There is a way to drive them back to the underworld. We just need to figure out how. Erlen, your tapestries don’t show you what causes one future to occur over another?”
She shook her head. “No. I just weave, and the future is what it is.”
Gild scratched behind his ear, deep in thought. “What if you wove the future that we wanted. What if you made a tapestry that showed us beating the Erlking?”
Erlen scoffed. “It doesn’t work like that. I’ve tried a thousand times to weave the future I want onto the loom. To show my curse being broken. Myself being free of Gravenstone. To show the dark ones being buried under enormous piles of dragon dung. But it doesn’t work. The threads weave what they want to weave.”
“But the threads you use,” said Gild. “They’re just normal threads, aren’t they?”
Her expression turned suspicious. “Sure. Whatever we could find in the castle. My monsters dismantled a lot of bed linens for me.” She tenderly stroked the head of an alp at her side.
“Have you ever worked with spun gold before?”
Erlen’s fingers stilled. “You mean … your gold?”
“Exactly. This might sound absurd, but … Hulda blessed us both with these gifts. What if … what if they’re intended to work together?” Gild went on before she could answer. “What if … if you were to weave a tapestry using spun gold? It’s supposed to be indestructible, so maybe that would make the future you weave with it indestructible, too? What if you could create an image that shows us how to win against the dark ones? We know it’s possible, right? We just need to know how.”
Erlen started to shake her head, but hesitated. “I suppose I could try. But do you have any gold for me to use?”
“Not here,” said Gild. “I’ll need a spinning wheel.”
“And I’ll need a loom.”
“How long will this take?” boomed Tyrr’s rough voice. “Weaving this tapestry.”
“Days, if not weeks,” said Erlen. “Depends on how big it’s going to be. Bigger works tend to have more detail, and details give more information.”
“But the wild hunt rides even now, hunting for Wyrdith,” said the god. “Hunting for me, once Erlkönig knows I have escaped him.”
“What else can we do?” said Gild. “We have no way to fight them. They’re immortal.”
“It would seem to me,” said Tyrr, “you already fought Perchta once, and you won.” They crossed their broad arms over their chest. “I do not remember you, young prince. But I remember the arrow that struck Perchta’s heart, tethering her to the veil until Velos could claim her. It was a very good shot.”
“Er, thanks,” said Gild. “Did you have anything to do with it?”
Tyrr smirked. “I only gave a little help.”
Gild sulked. “Thought maybe it was all me.”
“It wasn’t the precision of your aim that defeated the huntress,” said Tyrr. “If any arrow could so easily entrap a dark one, they would not be nearly as formidable. So I wonder, what was that arrow?”
Serilda gasped. “Gold! It was a golden arrow!”
Gild blinked at her. “It was?”
“Yes. Or at least, a gold-tipped arrow. Just like the arrows the Erlking used to tether our spirits, and capture the gods. His arrows must be god-spun gold, too. I would bet anything that the arrows he uses were yours once. He probably stole them after he cursed you.”
Gild started to pace. “So … if we had hundreds of golden arrows, we could shoot every dark one and send them all back to Verloren?”
“In theory, yes. If Velos was free to take them back.”
“This is a lot of ifs,” said Erlen.
“But it’s not impossible, right?” said Serilda.
Gild heaved a long sigh. “Thread for a tapestry, gold for arrows … it will take time. Where do we find a spinning wheel?”
“Adalheid,” said Serilda. “You’re mortal now. The people there will welcome you with open arms—their own Vergoldetgeist. Plus, there’s already so much god-spun gold in that city thanks to all the gifts you’ve given them over the years. Maybe you can use some of them.”
“But if it’s indestructible,” mused Erlen, “how do you change it into arrowheads?”
“Gild can mold it into whatever he wants. Right, Gild?”
He nodded. “Easy enough. But … Serilda.” His eyes darted toward the clouds, where a faint halo from the full moon was shining through. “When the veil falls…”
He didn’t have to finish. As long as Serilda did not have a mortal body, they would be separated.
That is—unless the Erlking succeeded in having the gods destroy the veil, but that would cause far more problems that she didn’t want to think about.
“I’m not staying with you,” she said. “You and Erlen will go to Adalheid, and I will try to find Wyrdith.”
“It’s not the Endless Moon,” said Gild. “What if Wyrdith can’t grant your wish and put you back in your body?”
She shrugged. “The baby is due soon. If I wait until the winter solstice, it might be too late.”
Gild dragged a frustrated hand through his hair. “You can’t go alone. The wild hunt is probably searching for Wyrdith as we speak.”
Serilda gulped and glanced at Tyrr. “Well,” she said slowly, “I hoped I wouldn’t be completely alone.”
“Wyrdith lived a nomadic life,” said Tyrr. “They might be difficult to find.”
“I know,” said Serilda. “But I know there was a time when they lived on the basalt cliffs in the north. I might be wrong, but I think they could be there still.”
Tyrr regarded her for a long moment. “The cliffs are not far. We could be there before midnight.”
Her insides warmed. “Really? You’ll come with me?”
“I will take you to the cliffs,” said Tyrr. They grinned hungrily, teeth flashing. “And should we encounter the wild hunt, I will relish the chance to return Erlkönig’s favor and put an arrow into his flesh this time.”
Chapter Forty-Six
Serilda did not know whether she was more terrified or euphoric. The wind in her face tasted of salt, so she knew the ocean was not far off. The crimson cloak billowed around her, whipping against her back, while far below, the world was painted in swaths of burgundy and ochre—the forest’s final hurrah of brilliant colors before the onset of winter would cover everything in gray and white. Dappled moonlight lit the earth in patches of silver and she occasionally spotted the flickering torchlights of a village settled along a black, winding river.
She searched the ground below for signs of the hunt barreling across the land, but everything was serene and still.
She wished she felt comfort in that.
This was the final full moon before the winter solstice. This was the night the Erlking would be hunting Wyrdith.
They dove into a cloud, and she could see nothing but wispy gray. The cold gnawed at her fingers the farther north they flew, making it difficult to cling to the scales on Tyrr’s back. She lowered her face as wind stung her cheeks and frost gathered on the tips of her braids.
Tyrr banked sharply to the west. They dipped beneath the cloud cover, and Serilda drew in a bewildered gasp to see a black abyss beneath her.
The ocean.
Churning waves speckled silver and white as they crashed against jagged rocks far, far below.
“Here!” she cried. “Land here!”
Faint moonlight defined a sharp line of the black basalt cliffs, giant columns plummeting toward the ocean. They were bigger than she’d imagined, and Serilda couldn’t help the sense of foreboding, of helplessness. Could Wyrdith really be here, in this cold, inhospitable place? The cliffs stretched on for miles and miles. How would she ever find the god?
“There!” she said, pointing toward a narrow plateau. The god flattened their wings and soared down. Serilda’s stomach swooped toward her throat and she clung tighter.
A whistle came from down below.
She felt a thud as something struck the wyvern. Tyrr hissed and bucked, leaning sideways so unexpectedly Serilda screamed and barely held on. As the wyvern regained control, she glimpsed the black fletching of an arrow jutting from behind one of the beast’s shoulders.
Wide-eyed, she looked around, searching for the hunt below, but it was too dark.
Another whistle.
Another thud.
“Tyrr!” she screamed as the wyvern turned sharply again. Suddenly they were free-falling. The beast spun through the air—Serilda was upside down, then airborne—and her fingers at last lost their grip on the god’s scaled back.
She screamed, arms flailing as her cloak whipped around her, and she dropped headlong through the air.
Then the wyvern was there. Claws in her cloak. Wings around her.
They slammed into the ground with such force, it knocked the air from Serilda’s lungs. Their bodies rolled together across the rocks of the plateau, and she felt every scrape, every thump, every brutal strike of the unrelenting ground. When they stopped, she found herself sprawled beside Tyrr in their human form—not wings, but arms wrapped around her.
“Tyrr,” she croaked, struggling to draw in breath as she pushed herself onto her knees. She saw the arrows. One had snapped in the fall, and only a broken shaft still stuck out from Tyrr’s shoulder. The other arrow she found intact in their thigh. “Tyrr! Are you all right?”
“I will be,” groaned the god, sitting up and looking around. “But the hunt is close.”
“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I shouldn’t have asked you to bring me here!”
“I made my choice,” said Tyrr in their gruff tone. They grabbed the arrow in their leg and yanked it from their flesh. Not gold, she noticed, explaining why Tyrr was not already trapped in their wyvern form. Maybe the Erlking was finally running out of his magic arrows.
Serilda grimaced, covering her mouth with both hands as blood gushed across the rocky ground. “You’re immortal. How can gods bleed when the dark ones do not?”
“We are made of flesh and bone,” Tyrr said. “They are made of nothing but darkness.”
Tyrr staggered to their feet and yanked Serilda up beside them. Folding their large hands over Serilda’s shoulders, Tyrr stared into her eyes. “Find Wyrdith. Warn them the hunt is coming. I will lure the dark ones away and keep them preoccupied until the veil falls.” Tyrr flashed a haughty grin. “Be careful, godchild of Wyrdith.”
With a flourish of their arm, one broken arrow still jutting from their shoulder, Tyrr transformed back into the hulking form of the rubinrot wyvern. They raced for the plateau’s edge and jumped, soaring out over the ocean waves. Moonlight glistened off their scales as they spiraled upward, wanting the hunt to take notice. The god of war spun back toward land and soared off, disappearing into the night sky.
Shivering, Serilda wrapped the cloak around her and looked around. For a long moment she couldn’t move, paralyzed by fear and cold and the horrible sensation that the hunt would be upon her any moment. The Erlking must have been close to strike Tyrr, and yet, she heard no howling hounds or stampeding horses or the haunting bellow of the horn.
The night was eerily quiet, but for the crashing of waves far below.
Her legs shook from the flight and the fall, but she made her way to the cliffside anyway.
The edges looked like they’d been sheared away with a knife, plummeting straight down to the whitecaps below, only the occasional ledge breaking up the sheer cliff face. She felt like she was standing at the edge of the world.
“Wyrdith?” she called. But her voice was weak and the wind stole the name away as soon as it left her mouth.
Again she searched the horizon for signs of the hunt. The plateau was wide enough that she’d have some warning of their approach, but she was vulnerable here with nowhere to hide.
