Diaspor Aspenwind's Arc

Chapter 16 of 18

Diaspor sat at the dry creek until the swarm's hum changed pitch above him. He stood and followed the track east because there was nothing else to follow. The path turned to cracked stone under a thin lavender dusk. Dead branches leaned over it. No fae walked beside him. The brand on his chest pulled at the cloth with every step, and the swarm moved with him in a low cloud, black bodies banded gold, hooked beaks glinting when they turned. He counted them once and stopped at eighty. He had no plan for eighty mouths. By the second night the swarm had built without asking him. He came around a bend and found a tree split open at the base, its trunk twisted into a tall purple shell. Yellow grubs filled the hollows. Falconbees crawled the bark in slow rings. The hive stood three times his height. He had not chosen the place. They had. He understood then that the bond ran the other way too: they would anchor where he walked, and every step he took would plant another hive behind him. Nightshade's hunt was not finished. It was only his to carry. He sat against a rock across from the hive and pulled the gold wheel pendant from his coat. The hum rose. He turned the pendant in his fingers and tried what the council had ordered him to try. He spoke the dismissal the healer had taught him. The swarm pressed lower. He raised his voice and ordered them to scatter, to go, to leave him. They circled tighter. One landed on his wrist and did not sting. He understood the answer. They would not be sent. They had chosen. He drew his sword and laid it across his knees. He thought about the blade across his own throat. The swarm would scatter then, the way he had once believed they would scatter when he killed their master. But he had promised himself an order: survive, confess, account. He had done the second. The third was still owed. He could not pay it dead. He sheathed the sword. He pressed the pendant flat against the brand on his chest and held it there until the metal warmed. "Then you come with me," he said. "All of you. Until I find what cuts this." The hum settled into one low note. He took it as agreement, or as a leash he had just accepted on both ends. He stood at dawn and walked east again. The hive stayed where it was, a marker behind him on the forsaken path. The swarm rose and followed in formation, unwanted, unshakable, his. He had failed to disperse them. He had decided instead to keep them, and to keep walking, until someone living or dead could tell him how to end what Nightshade had begun.