PART TWO
Nettle woke slowly and easily. Around him was the light and warmth of a small fire, as though he had dozed off peacefully and awoken well-rested before the hearth. Then the turmoil of his escape flashed through his mind like cold lightning, and he sat upright and reached for the hilt of the stolen sword.
It was night still. He lay on cold stone, hard as glass. The darkness of the cave was a moonless shroud – he saw the fire, lit amongst a handful of pale stones, and nothing else. All around was shadow, and he gripped the bronze blade, drawing it and holding it up against the darkness.
Moving to stand he stretched his legs, and only then remembered the wound that should be there. The flesh and skin were whole, and no scar remained.
“Am I dead?” Nettle wondered aloud.
“Not yet!” said a little voice beside him, and he started at the sound. Emerging from the night and hanging in the air above him was a woman, though she could not be, for everything about her was beyond the bounds of nature.
She was small, not merely short but tiny, barely an inch for every foot a mortal might grow. Hers was not the natural brown of human skin but almost true bronze, a rich and ruddy sheen that glinted in the firelight yet moved as living flesh.
And from her back grew wings, tapered like autumn leaves, that flitted in the warm air. She wore only a dress of white fabric that tied around her neck and clung to her broad hips, leaving her wings free and her long brown legs bare.
She was a fairy – a spirit made manifest in the world of mortal men.
Instinctively, Nettle waved his sword at the apparition, but the little figure danced easily away through the air and laughed. The sound was like honey and water, and her smile and eyes were bright beneath coils of dark coppery hair.
Something about the way she hung in the air, reflecting the light of the fire, put Nettle in mind of another strange sight he had met upon this cursed rock.
“...Are you the flame? The spirit that lead me here?”
“The spirit that saved you!” she pouted, folding her arms. “You’re welcome, by the way. Oh, and I lit us a fire, too.” Nettle saw now that the fire, like the floating candle-flame, burned with neither wood nor oil, and gave no smoke.
Nettle exhaled. This was the strangest encounter he’d had in a day of passing strangeness, but he knew danger when it befell him, and this creature meant no harm. He placed the stolen sword beside him on the stone floor.
“Indeed I must thank you, spirit,” said he, gesturing towards the disappeared wound. “Did you heal me by your power also?”
The fairy shrugged. “You tossed and struggled in your sleep, and seemed in need of fixing. It’s within my power to mend the injuries of a mortal.”
Nettle’s brow tightened. “Even death?”
She laughed again, “Nay!” But her smile quickly faded. “That is sorcery beyond any spirit known to this world.”
“And yet the one who held you in that cage...” Nettle shook his head as if it might clear his tangled thoughts, but to no avail. “Your master? Or else your captor? Why do the dead draw breath?”
“Indeed... I suppose I must thank you too, in kind, for freeing me.” The spirit alighted on a loose stone near where Nettle lay, and he sat up to face her and listen as she told her tale.
“I was trapped, yes, bound to the will of a sorcerer, a most ignoble thing for a spirit. He used my flame for heat and light, and healed himself of any injury by my powers. But upon coming to this isle none of his cunning and trickery could save him, and he soon fell to another.”
“The one who raised the dead?”
She nodded. “There was a third traveller to this isle, before you or the one who brought me here. One with the powers of a fell spirit, and fouler intentions. That is the curse that was brought here – that any who die might walk again, beneath that wizard’s banner. My captor had sought to steal this knowledge, slay its wielder and take it if necessary, but for all his art could not withstand the onslaught of the fallen.”
“Where is the other sorcerer now?”
Her copper hair shook. “I know not. I didn’t even see them. Only felt the power that bound their undying slaves to this realm, and then the cries of my master as they fell upon him.”
Nettle frowned. “I am sorry.”
“Pah!” said she. “He was no better! Nasty power-grubbing scoundrel. Binding me in the form of a pitiful flame within a circle of black iron, which any fool knows all spirits loathe.”
Nettle had not known this, but kept quiet about it.
Then her eyes flicked up and met Nettle’s storm-coloured stare. “But you... You saved me. And now my body is restored!” she said.
He nodded slowly. “And you saved me, when your captor’s corpse attacked me.”
Her smile returned, and Nettle had the sense it was rarely far from her lips. “We make quite the pair! What is your name, friend?”
Nettle shrugged. “I have none. But there are those who call me Nettle.”
Her laughter filled their small cave again. “No name! That’s wise. I have none either, though these things work differently for spirits. But I suppose I shall take one for you, as you have done for me. If you are Nettle, then I’ll be Thorn.”
Nettle managed a smile at that. “Two small, stinging pains.”
“Ha! And one a little smaller than the other.” Thorn lifted back into the air on a waft of her wings with apparently no effort. “So then, young Nettle. What do you plan to do now?”
Nettle needed no time to think. “I would be rid of this cursed island, as soon as I can. I will steal back into the village, find my boat, and sail away.”
Thorn pursed her lips. “You’ll row, I think. No wind has blown within a league of here since the curse began.”
Nettle shrugged. “An ordeal, but better than staying here. What will you do, little Thorn?”
She winked. “I’ll fly! To where, who knows.”
Nettle paused, and the fire crackled. The earliest, dimmest light of dawn was beginning to join its glow. “Perhaps we might travel together? See what ends our combined strengths can be put to. I’m sure there are treasures out there for the earning, though I know nothing of what a spirit wants.”
Thorn paused in turn, and fixed her gaze. “Freedom.”
Her bright eyes met his stormy stare, and both smiled. And that was that.
Then there came a rattling from beyond the mouth of the cave. Nettle and Thorn wheeled about and readied themselves. Footsteps approached.
“Curses!” hissed Nettle through his teeth, clutching the stolen sword.
Thorn drew herself up to his shoulder and silently commanded the flames to die down. The pair were plunged into darkness but for a crack of light from the early dawn outside, listening past their heavy breaths to await what approached them.
A silhouette came across the threshold, casting its long shadow across the pale cave floor. With it came a voice, deep and oily, leering in its slow satisfaction.
“Come out. Come out...”
Nettle surged towards the shadow, blade raised to strike. He emerged with a great swing of the bronze sword, blinking in the new light, but struck nothing. Eyes quickly adjusting he saw no shadow, nor the one had cast it. Yet again he heard that voice, now echoing in his head with jeering laughter.
Thorn followed him out quickly with a whirring of wings. “Nettle, you fool!”
“An illusion, to draw us out,” he said, bemoaning his own rashness.
“Nothing more,” she sighed. “Do not trust your eyes by daylight when sorcery is afoot. Only the moon reveals the truth.”
“The little one is wise! Alas, too late.” There was the voice again, not from within their heads but above them. A figure stood upon the clifftop above the cave, lit by the dawn and flanked on both sides by the living dead.
The man looking down on them was pale, nearly as white as the stone itself, and dressed in black robes, embroidered sleeves so long they hid his hands. There was no hair upon his head, only thick dark brows over darker eyes that gleamed gem-like as they beheld their prey. The creatures to either side were long dead, hunched and withered, their rotting flesh taut upon their bones.
“You!” Nettle growled, for he knew this man. This was the same villager who had accused him of sorcery the day before! At that time he had worn a simple tunic, and talked in the manner of the locals as he hid among them. But there was no mistaking his pale face, or the darkness in his eyes.
“You have fought valiantly to have survived the night, traveller,” said the sorcerer. “But your struggles are at an end. Your chains await you.”
And with a swish of a concealed hand he sent the undead warriors leaping down from the cliff, brandishing wooden staves. Each fell clumsily but with no fear or pain to slow their approach, and within moments Nettle was forced to parry their blows.
Each mighty swing he deflected with the bronze blade sent tremors up his arm, and he was forced to retreat. He tried to hack at one staff as it rose up above him, and succeeded in splintering the wood, all his strength behind the keen edge of the blade. But the corpse was not deterred, striking with the broken pieces and closing further in.
Thorn cried out in anger, taking Nettle aback as she suddenly flew up and straight towards the sorcerer’s face. The bald man simply smiled, raising one arm.
A pale-fingered hand emerged from the sleeve grasping a chain of black iron, which struck forth like a serpent and wound itself around Thorn’s waist quicker than she could arc away. She grimaced in pain, her wings trapped, held aloft now not by her own power but that of the wizard.
Nettle yelled and tried to push past the corpses that harangued him, but in his haste was caught by a blow to his shoulder and stumbled to his knees. The undying warriors raised their weapons at the ready, circling him.
“Resist,” the sorcerer said slowly, “and I'll crush her like an insect.”
Nettle saw the chain tighten, the agony on Thorn’s face. He glowered but stayed down, drawing deep breaths.
“Very good,” said the sorcerer. “Now... To your doom.”
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