Chapter 37: Dead Hair
Lucky carried Toren through the forest as evening settled between the trees. The machine behaved perfectly.
It also smelled of Dorian.
Brass, warm oil and leather followed Toren for the entire journey. Every time he leaned forward, the scent rose from the controls. Every time Lucky adjusted beneath him, he remembered Dorian’s hands on the same handles.
By the time the Pain Monastery came into view, Toren had thought far too much.
He landed the way Dorian had shown him, Lucky’s nose slightly raised.
Perfectly.
A monk came to meet him while Lucky’s engine cooled. “Brother Aren is away seeing a patient. He will return in the morning.”
Toren looked towards the darkening forest. “I’ll wait.”
The monk nodded and led him inside. Then the monk opened the guest-room door.
Toren stopped.
Of course.
The same room. The bed stood against the wall, blankets neatly folded. Nothing remained of Dorian. No coat. No brass cuff.
Nothing except memory.
Easy. Breathe with me.
Toren closed his eyes. He had known before leaving the Steppe Outpost that something had changed. Perhaps before that. Perhaps when Dorian had said that nobody wanted to stay with Walkers.
Toren put his bag down. He had come for Aren’s answer. He was also beginning to suspect he already had one of his own.
Morning found Toren awake. He had slept a little. Every time he closed his eyes, the room supplied memories with unnecessary accuracy. Dorian’s voice behind him. His hands. His breath against Toren’s neck.
By sunrise, Toren gave up.
He washed, dressed and left the room.
Aren returned not long after. Toren saw him coming through the monastery entrance with two younger monks. Mud marked the bottom of his robe, and a leather bag hung from one shoulder. He looked tired, but otherwise exactly as Toren remembered him.
Aren noticed him immediately, stopped in front of him and studied his face. “You did not sleep.”
“I did.”
“Poorly, then.”
Toren decided there was little benefit in arguing with someone professionally trained to notice suffering. “We brought the Mother to the Steppe Lands. The Pact is renewed.”
Aren bowed. “May you and all who travelled with you be blessed.”
“The Mother is waiting for your answer. Did you find anything, Brother?”
Aren’s expression changed. “Yes.”
That pushed Dorian, the room and the entire miserable night out of Toren’s thoughts.
Aren gestured for him to follow. “Come with me.”
Aren led Toren deeper into his ‘garden’. They passed several marked patches of earth, each carefully separated from the next. The air smelled of damp soil, burned herbs and things that had once been alive.
Then Toren saw the Drommala’s plot.
He stopped.
The piece of the Drommala’s trunk was still buried beneath the glass. White threads covered it. Hundreds of them, packed over one another. Some had worked out from beneath the edges and spread across the earth in thin, tangled layers. But they stopped at the protective border. Every strand ended at the line of salt and burned herbs. Not one crossed it.
Toren stared.
Aren watched him rather than the threads. “You know what they are?”
Toren moved closer to the colourless strands. His injured hand began to ache. “I saw them in the Hush.”
Aren’s eyes narrowed. “You were in the Hush?”
“Yes. We did not know where the mirror led until we crossed.”
For the first time, Aren looked genuinely unsettled. “You crossed an unknown mirror?”
Toren nodded. “The Walker unsealed it.”
Aren stared at him for a moment. “Brave. And stupid.”
Toren sighed. “We were running out of options.”
Then he pointed towards the threads. “They were everywhere. Inside the cracks in the ground. Wrapped around bones.”
His gaze stayed on the plot. “I touched the earth to listen to it. The threads reacted. They wrapped around my hand.”
Aren looked at him sharply. “Which hand?”
Toren lifted his left one. The old marks were faint now, pale lines across his fingers and wrist.
Aren reached towards it, then stopped before touching him. “How badly?”
Toren hesitated. “They broke the skin. Pieces remained in the wounds for a while.”
Aren’s attention returned to the plot. Toren stepped closer to the glass.
“Toren.”
He barely heard the warning. The threads moved. Not slowly. Every strand nearest him lifted at once.
Toren froze.
The white mass surged across the glass. Straight towards him. It reached the protective border and stopped. For half a second. Then several threads rose above it.
Aren moved.
Too late.
The first strand struck Toren’s left hand. Pain exploded through his fingers. He jerked backwards, but more threads followed, wrapping around his wrist almost instantly. They darkened as they touched his skin, white turning pink, then red.
“Toren, do not pull.” Aren’s voice sharpened.
Toren could not have if he tried. The threads tightened and raced up his arm.
Wrist. Forearm. Elbow.
They moved impossibly fast.
Toren grabbed his arm. Red threads were already winding around it, biting into the skin as they climbed.
“Aren.” The word broke into a gasp.
The threads reached his shoulder. Something tore through his body. His knees gave way. Aren caught him with one arm and pressed his other hand against Toren’s chest.
Magic struck. Cold first. Then pain.
Aren dragged something through him, following the threads backwards from shoulder to wrist. Toren screamed. He felt them tightening, resisting, burrowing deeper as Aren forced them out.
The world narrowed to Aren’s hand and the terrible pulling inside his arm.
“Toren, stay with me.”
Toren tried. The threads around his shoulder blackened.
Aren spoke in the old Forest dialect. The protective border flared. Every strand connecting Toren to the garden snapped back at once. His arm dropped uselessly against Aren. Blood ran from his fingers, wrist and forearm. Thin red lines crossed the skin all the way to his shoulder, some already darkening beneath the surface.
Aren caught his face between both hands. “Toren.”
He tried to answer.
Aren’s face blurred. “Toren. Look at me.”
He did.
For approximately one second.
Then everything went black.
Toren burned with fever through most of the first night. Aren stayed beside him.
Once, somewhere between waking and sleep, Toren turned his head against the pillow. “Dorian.”
Aren looked up.
“Stay.” Toren’s eyes remained closed.
Aren changed the cold cloth on Toren’s forehead and returned to mixing remedies.
By morning, the fever had eased enough for Toren to wake properly. He looked around. Protective markings covered the walls. Salt and burned herbs formed an unbroken barrier around the room. Aren sat beside the bed.
“Where am I?” Toren's voice was weak.
“In a sealed chamber. Some magic is safer when it has nowhere to spread.” Aren checked Toren's pulse.
Then Aren gently moved Toren’s left arm onto the folded cloth, exposing the wounds from his fingers to his shoulder. Aren picked up the narrow silver forceps. “I need to remove what they left behind.”
Aren pulled carefully. Pain shot through Toren’s arm. A thin white fragment emerged from beneath the skin, twisting around the forceps. Aren dropped it into a glass jar covered in protective symbols. Cloudy green liquid filled the bottom.
“How many?” Toren watched the fragment writhe, darken and dissolve.
“Too many. In the Hush, you probably provoked it when you tried to use your magic.” Aren removed another. Then another.
“I suspect that in the garden, it recognised your hand. Apparently, Dead Hair does not like losing its prey twice.”
“Dead Hair?”
“Yes. I found the name in one of the old books. But there was nothing about its reaction to magic.”
Toren’s body started shaking after Aren removed another piece. Aren stopped, leaned forward and pulled Toren against him.
Toren recognised the intention and panicked. “No, it might spread to you!”
“Less likely. I’ve already weakened it with spells to make it safe enough.” Aren didn’t move an inch.
“Aren.”
“Be quiet.”
Aren held him firmly, one arm around his back, the other supporting his injured arm between them. Toren’s bare chest pressed against Aren’s warmth. He felt the slow rise of Aren’s breathing, the brush of his beard against his temple, the steady weight of his body holding him in place.
Relief came first. Then guilt. The pain was already beginning to leave him, and Toren knew exactly where it was going. Into Aren. Into the body holding his. He should have pulled away. Instead, for one weak moment, he let himself rest against him. The closeness felt safe.
That was almost worse. Dorian crossed his mind without permission. Toren shut his eyes. Warmth spread through the embrace.
Then the pain moved.
Toren gasped as it drained from his arm. The wounds remained, but the agony disappeared. Aren inhaled sharply and closed his eyes for a moment.
“Aren, thank you.”
Aren lifted a hand to Toren’s face and stroked his cheek with a faint smile. Then he reached for the forceps again. Without the pain, Toren felt only pressure as Aren continued, piece by piece.
Toren drifted in and out of sleep.
When he woke again, daylight filled the room. Aren slept in the chair beside the bed. The jar was nearly full of dark residue.
“How long have I been like this?” Toren’s voice was husky.
Aren opened his eyes. “Two days.”
“You stayed here?”
“Yes.”
Aren examined Toren’s arm again. “One more.”
Toren looked at the forceps. “Could you take the pain first, please?”
Aren carefully drew Toren to his chest.
Once the last white fragments were removed, Toren’s wounds healed surprisingly quickly under Aren’s balms and spells. By the following morning, most of the cuts had closed. His arm still ached and weakness followed every movement, but he could walk without assistance.
In Aren’s laboratory, Toren produced a folded parchment. “The map from the Hush. The Great Council calls that place Acalith.”
Aren opened it carefully across the table.
The Acalith markings covered one section. He studied them for several minutes, then retrieved his drawings of the surviving rune from the Drommala and a few reconstructed from Toren’s memory.
Toren watched him compare line after line. Finally, Aren sat back.
“They are not the same runes, but they are from the same system.” Aren touched one of the Acalith markings, then the drawing from the Drommala. “The principle is identical. The way the magic is directed. The way the lines bind to each other.”
Toren looked between them. “So whoever killed the Drommala used Acalith magic.”
“Yes.” Aren folded the report over the drawings. “Together with Dead Hair, this is enough for me to say where the method originated.”
Toren exhaled slowly. At least they had something now.
Aren turned the map over. His hand stopped. On the other side was the image of the silver-antlered deer. “You saw this?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Where we found the Mother.”
Aren looked at him.
Toren continued. “It was beautiful. Water everywhere. White trees. Animals with mirror eyes. Vaelyn.”
Aren remained silent for several seconds. “The Sacred Shelter,” he said at last.
“Do you know that place?”
Aren lowered his head briefly. “Only from old stories. You were greatly blessed. The Mother does not allow others into the Sacred Shelter.”
“May I?” Aren moved closer to Toren.
Toren nodded. Aren placed a hand carefully on Toren’s shoulder. He closed his eyes. Warmth moved beneath his palm as his magic searched for whatever trace that world might have left on Toren.
After a moment, Toren said quietly, “The Walker found it.”
Aren opened his eyes.
Toren added, “His eyes became mirrors there too.”
Aren said nothing. He simply watched Toren. Toren looked back at the map, suddenly very interested in the deer. Aren removed his hand from his shoulder. He had heard considerably more than Toren had actually said.
Aren returned to the drawings. “There is another problem.”
Toren looked up.
Aren pointed to the white lines worked through the Drommala rune. “Getting material out of the Hush is one thing. Keeping it dangerous and controllable is another.”
“Someone extracted the essence from Dead Hair?”
“Yes.”
“Could you?”
Aren considered that. “Perhaps. With preparation.”
Toren raised an eyebrow.
“I have protective chambers, stabilising solutions and equipment for separating magical contamination from living tissue. I am still not certain I could preserve it this cleanly.”
Aren tapped the rune drawing. “The essence was prepared before it was worked into the markings. The runes kept it stable, then directed it through the Drommala’s body.”
Toren remembered the threads racing up his arm. “Fast.”
“And I suspect the same rune system weakened her magic long enough for it to spread.”
Toren looked at the Acalith markings. “And they could have used it to get past her protection?”
“Possibly. Warriors, wards, the Drommala herself. Someone still got close enough to place this beneath her scales.”
“So not someone experimenting.”
“No.” Aren’s expression hardened. “I know of no laboratory in the Loteri Lands equipped for work like this. Mine might manage it. Perhaps.”
That was not comforting.
“They had equipment,” Toren said.
“Yes.”
“Access to the Hush.”
“Or access to someone who did.”
Aren gathered the drawings into the report. “This was planned, Toren. Someone knew how to reach her, weaken her and make the poison spread.”
The laboratory suddenly felt considerably less safe.
Aren sealed the report and handed it to Toren.
“Everything is there. The threads. The rune construction. The Hush connection. The extraction method, as far as I could determine it. I also found fur.”
Toren took the packet carefully. “Fur?”
“Yes.” Aren’s expression tightened. “Fragments caught beneath the scales. Not enough to identify the source. I will not pretend otherwise.”
Toren nodded.
Beside the report lay a smaller package containing written instructions, several packets of burned herbs and two sealed bottles.
“The cleansing mixture,” Aren said. “If the white growth appears again, do not touch it. Establish a border first. Salt, burned herbs, then the solution and the spell.”
He looked at Toren’s arm. “The border will stop it spreading. It will not stop it reaching for something it already knows.”
Toren looked at the thin pink lines across his skin.
“If it reaches living tissue, remove every fragment before healing.”
Toren packed everything carefully. By afternoon, Lucky waited outside the monastery. He secured the report inside his bag, checked the straps twice and rested one hand on the machine.
Aren stood nearby.
Toren should have left. Instead, he hesitated.
“Brother Aren.”
“Yes?”
Toren looked towards the forest rather than at him. “What if duty and the heart pull in different directions?”
Silence followed.
When Toren finally looked back, Aren was watching him with the same attention he had shown in the laboratory.
“Duty does not make the choice for you,” Aren said. “Neither does the heart. You choose which consequences you are willing to carry.”
Toren lowered his eyes. He said nothing for several seconds. Then he bowed to Aren.
“Thank you. Sael thalen.”
“Sael thalen,” Aren replied quietly.
Toren climbed onto Lucky and started the engine. Brass and warm oil filled the air again.
Dorian.
Toren closed his eyes briefly.
Then Lucky lifted from the ground.
He left the Pain Monastery carrying Aren’s report and an answer he was not certain he wanted.