Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Ten

I pointed my left hand at him, and screamed for blood. I pushed my power into the wound, and tore it wider. Onilwyn stumbled, but kept coming at a limping run. He was almost to me. I prayed to the Goddess and the Consort. I prayed for strength. Strength to save myself and my babies.

Onilwyn fell to his knees on the dark winter ground. He tried to stand, but his wounded leg betrayed him, and he ended on all fours, blood gushing out onto the frosted grass. The white of the frost vanished in the warm rush of his blood.

He started crawling toward me, dragging his injured leg behind him like a broken tail. He kept his sword in one fist, the point raised a little above the ground so it didn't catch on anything. The look on his face was implacable. His eyes held only certainty and hatred.

I wanted to ask what I had ever done to him for such hatred to grow, but I had to concentrate on bleeding him to death before he could put that sword through me and my unborn children.

I wasn't even frightened anymore. All the emotion that was in me was concentrated in my left hand. Concentrated into one thought: die. I could pretend that all I wanted was his blood, but that wasn't enough. I needed death. I needed Onilwyn's death.

He was close enough that I could see the sheen of sweat on his face, even by moonlight. I kept my hand pointed at him, and I cried out, "Die! Die for me!"

Onilwyn rose to his knees, swaying like a thin tree caught in a strong wind, but he rose above Mistral's quiet body. The sword also rose.

I kept my hand pointed at him, but crawled backward from that shining metal. His hand fell, the sword striking the ground where I had been. He didn't seem to realize at first that he'd missed me. He drove the sword home viciously, as if he were cutting flesh.

I got to my feet, still bleeding him, still killing him.

Onilwyn frowned at the ground, where he was cutting nothing. He leaned on Mistral's body, one hand holding on to the other man. The other hand, with its sword, was thrust into the ground, but it was almost as if he'd forgotten it was there.

He frowned up at me, as if he couldn't quite focus. "Cel said you were weak."

"Die for me, Onilwyn. Die for me, and keep your oath."

His sword fell from his fingers. "If you can bleed me, you can save me."

"You would kill me and my unborn children. Why should I save you?"

"For pity," he said, his eyes beginning to look slightly to the side of where I stood.

I smelled roses, and the words that came from my mouth were not my words. "I am the dark goddess. I am the destroyer of worlds. I am the face of the moon when all light is gone. I could have come to you, Onilwyn, in the shape of light and spring and life, but you have called the winter down upon yourself, and there is no pity in the snow. There is only death."

"You are with child," he said, as he began to slump toward the cold ground. "You are full of life."

I touched my stomach with my right hand; the left never stopped pointing at him. "The Goddess is all things at all times. There is never life without death, never light without darkness, never pain without hope. I am the Goddess, I am creation and destruction. I am the cradle of life, and the end of the world. You would destroy me, Ash Lord, but you cannot."

He stared up at me with unfocused eyes. He reached out toward me, not with magic, but as if he would touch me, or was trying to touch something. I wasn't certain he was reaching for me, but he saw something in that moment. He saw something that made him reach for it.

"Forgive me," he whispered.

"I am the face of the goddess that you called into being this night, Ash Lord. Is there forgiveness in the face you see?"

"No," he whispered. He slumped until the side of his face touched the ground, and the rest of him was draped across Mistral's body. He shuddered, and gave a last, long breath. Onilwyn, Lord of the Ash Grove, died as he had lived, surrounded by enemies.