CHAPTER TEN: THE HOLLOWED
Spring, 1994
Michael
The Spring of Michael’s seventeenth birthday, he was brought with his older brother before the Founder’s Tree. As the door to the car closed, Michael stepped out onto the pavement at the foot of the path in the depths of Point Defiance Park and looked over his shoulder at the back door before moving to help Matthew out of the car. His older brother was of even height with Michael, and the family resemblance was unmistakable. Both shared their father’s dark hair and sharp-featured face, though Matthew’s eyes were their father’s dark blue whereas Michael’s were their mother’s brown. Matthew was thin where Michael was strong, and whether as a result of his disability or simple genetics, the heir to the House of Schwan was sleight at nineteen, with a physical fragility that was more obvious to his younger brother than anyone else.
Matthew took his hand as he shifted his legs out and onto the ground. “Thanks Mike,” he said quietly, and retrieved his cane from under the seat. The head was silver in a swan’s likeness, with tiny blue sapphires for the eyes. Matthew planted the butt on the ground and straightened with an effort that only Michael recognized, expertly buried beneath layers of carefully fostered masking. “I’m good now.”
Michael hesitated for just a moment. “You sure?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Matthew said, taking a fortifying breath. Michael heard him quietly murmur “His eyes are on us.”
The brothers exchanged a look before they were interrupted by the voice of their father. “Come along now, boys. It’s not a long hike, but it’s also not an easy one.”
George Schwan was the consummate Prince. A shock of gray ran through his hair, dark still even in his mid-sixties, his build powerful and expression stern. He had the sort of eyes that put people in the place prepared for them without needing a word, and as he looked at both of his sons, Michael was acutely aware of what his own was. The Spare.
George settled his gaze on Matthew and said “You will need assistance.”
“Dad,” Michael started, “he’s not—”
“Diana,” George said, cutting Michael off. “Help my heir. I will not have him limping.”
Diana came around from the other side of the car, her brand new retainer’s pin of the crowned swan and sword shining on her lapel. Matthew was watching his father with that careful, level sort of way he often did. Michael waited to see how his brother would react. She offered him her arm and instead of taking it he leaned on his cane and started off at a clip that forced both Michael and Diana to keep up.
“Your heir walks every day,” Matthew said simply in high speech. “I know when I’ve hit my limit.”
“My Lord Matthew—” Diana started, her tone not completely hiding her frustration.
“Keep up,” Matthew said, not looking back. “I’ll decide when I need help.”
Diana moved past Michael and George both, her long legs carrying her swiftly across the ground as Matthew made his way towards the path. She slowed until she was keeping pace at his side, or just behind him, positioned within easy grasping reach of his arm.
Matthew gave her an annoyed look. “I said that I’ll decide when I need help.”
Diana’s high speech had the cool insistence of one who would not be outfoxed. “And I will decide how easily your hand will reach my arm—or not—when the time comes.”
They shared a look, the heir bristling silently and his bodyguard smiling sweetly in return. “I swore an oath, My Lord,” Diana said. “Your pride shall not keep me from fulfilling it.”
Michael watched them walk for a few seconds before he started off himself, hands thrust into the pockets of his jeans. It was a shame that fraternization between retainers and family was forbidden, he idly reflected. Diana and his brother really were perfect for each other. George Schwan started off himself, eventually passing both his sons to take the lead and setting a pace clearly designed to test the limits of his older son’s insistence. Michael brought up the rear, relishing—for the moment—being out of focus.
They climbed through the forest for close to an hour. Point Defiance Park was officially seven hundred and sixty acres of old growth and new growth forest that thrust out into the Puget Sound at Tacoma’s northeastern end… and that was precisely how the Council wanted the mortal world to continue to see things. Unofficially, the park was much, much larger, with labyrinthine paths that branched off and doubled back on each other, the entire thing the result of generations of natural magical occurrences that the families had found highly useful since first coming here. Per the Council, not all these paths had been mapped and to this day the park was considered neutral territory among the families.
Unofficially, Point Defiance Park was widely considered Schwan territory, and nobody among the other houses had a better knowledge of its hidden paths and byways, a trust that they’d repaid to their allies and enemies alike by keeping a secret from all of them, deep within it. This secret was the Founder’s Tree.
They were met at the gate of the clearing by a beautiful spirit, draped in leaves and flowers, his body formed of a thousand whorling roots of wood. Seeing George, he slowly bowed in reverence, and said in high speech, “Welcome, Prince of Schwan. The gate stands open for thee.”
“Respect to thee, Root,” the Prince said, giving the slightest incline of his head and addressing the spirit who tended the place. Root smiled, the creases of the bark that made up his face forming into the warmest expression Michael had ever seen, then the guardian of the grove vanished in a swirl of rose petals.
The sight of the clearing beyond took Michael’s breath away. Roses bloomed in a dozen colors around the edges, carefully pruned by the Tenders to grow in intricate patterns that Michael recognized as a ritual circle, though he didn’t know what that circle was for. Dimly, Michael remembered trying to stay awake through his mother’s educational teachings on ritual magic. When chastised for falling asleep, he’d answered with “I’m a Physic. The hell am I gonna need rituals for?”
“One day you will be your brother’s right hand—”
“And Matthew already knows about this stuff.”
Michael turned in a circle and asked, “What’s all this for?”
“I’m getting to that,” George said as he approached the tree. It rose from the center, a vision of green, gnarled and twisted and yet somehow standing taller than any of the trees surrounding it. He stood at the base of the massive trunk—easily big enough for five men to surround with their arms spread and barely touch fingers—and looked at Matthew. “Soon I will appoint a new circle of Tenders to manage this site,” the prince said. “When I do, you will stand by my side and assist me in that decision.”
Matthew—now leaning slightly on Diana’s arm—nodded. “I will do my best.”
George nodded, and turning back to the Founder’s Tree, finally answered Michael’s question. “This place is our family’s sacred charge. Beneath these powerful roots lies a means for the Enemy of Old to enter the world once more. The Vacant Ones may have faded from mankind’s memory, and the other Houses may believe them forever gone, but we Schwans remember, and watch, and guard the door of night. Our words: ‘Purest of Heart’ reflect this singular purpose.”
The Prince must have sensed Michael’s dubiousness, and with a swift motion to his left side, he drew his glassblade: black-edged and red-spined, filled with his power and presence. Its name was Swansong, and every Prince of the House had wielded it since the day it was made centuries ago. Michael had never seen the intense light it gave off now, visible even in the brightest daylight.
“Draw your blade, Michael,” George said.
A soft crack announced the drawing of Michael’s own red sword, and looking down, the same bright light burned from its core. Looking up at his father, Michael said “Why are they doing that? I’ve never seen a sword get this bright.”
“Glassblades were invented to fight and kill the Vacant Ones,” George said. “And we Schwans were the first to bear them, to give their secrets to the others. They’re glowing because the enemy is close, even though they are held at bay, and cannot escape. They shine because they remember their original purpose.” He sheathed Swansong into the void once more and turning to the brothers said “when I am gone, this place will be under your care. You must tell no one but your most trusted retainers about it. Of my own, only Agnes the Green knows. You must never reveal it to the other Houses. If they were to know, they would bicker about the responsibility that is ours, and challenge our right to hold it, and bickering could become war, and chaos, and then the door could be opened again. Do you understand?”
Michael gulped. He and Matthew exchanged a look.
More words were said. More explanations were given, and eventually the party made its way back through the winding paths towards the car. George was just ahead of Michael when he abruptly stopped, one hand going to his left arm, and a grunt of discomfort escaped his lips.
“Dad,” Michael started. “Are you alright?”
George took a deep breath, then straightened with effort and kept walking. “I’m fine. Just some irritation in my shoulder. Trained too hard yesterday.”
Michael hurried to catch up to his father’s accelerated pace. “Maybe you should get some re—”
George looked over his shoulder, snapping “I said I am fine, boy. Now leave it be.”
Michael stopped, feeling like he’d just been struck, and George kept walking, leaving both his sons behind.
Autumn, 2013
Michael made his way up the path alone in the cold and the dark rain. Eighteen years since his father’s death, and the sting of his annoyance at Michael’s concern was as sharp as if it were yesterday. We had a little more than a year left with the old bastard, he thought as he walked. Fate gave us so many warnings. Matthew, did I screw it all up?
The dead didn’t answer, and that was still painful, even after all these years. The path was rain-sodden and dark, but Michael still mostly knew the way.
He occasionally glanced at the ground for signs of other footprints on the trail but ruefully acknowledged each time that they were well enough into the wet season that it would have been impossible to discern anyone’s passing through the mud and dirt along this route even if he’d been an expert tracker, which he wasn’t.
Pausing on the trail, Michael turned, looking back at the dark expanse of woods through which he’d passed, the same trees of a nineteen-year-old memory in palette-swapped darkness and gloom opposite the glimmering gold of yesteryear. He reached out with his Sixth Sense, trying to sense any threat, whether they be spirit, man, or the things that were not supposed to be here at all. Fruitless. Michael was a peerless warrior with his sword in hand, and few had as high a mastery of combative magic, but when it came to perception, his gifts were weak even for a Physic.
He took out his phone. No signal. Odd. Nothing to do but keep going until he reached the tree and hopefully got some answers. Someone had murdered the Tenders, and not just one or two, but all of them. That meant they had to know who they were, and that meant they likely knew who had appointed them, who they served… and what they existed to tend and protect. Starting off again, he tried not to dwell on how isolated he was. Alone in the dark, he thought involuntarily. With only memory and disturbing old stories for company.
Old bedtime stories and George and Agnes’s lectures chased him as he walked. The Vacant Ones came. In those days Wielders were scattered and leaderless. The Vacant Ones consumed the living spirits of the earth, hollowing what they devoured into an army of gnawing, empty husks they commanded to kill, destroy, and feed upon. Michael almost tripped over a root, found his footing, and kept going. In this darkness, the Guides reached out, and finding seven heroes, sent them to the one called Paladin, who passed onto them the secrets of the glassblades. The Wielders rallied, and fought with sword and fire, and they won, and pushed the Vacant Ones back beyond the veil from whence they first emerged. Time passed, the Wielders allowed themselves to fade from mankind’s memory. Seven Heroes became Seven Families, and the Guides bequeathed them with the wisdom to rule.
Until it all went wrong.
He was nearly at the clearing. The path was still tended, though the rose bushes were being invaded by the same Himalayan blackberries that infested the rest of the Pacific Northwest, and here Michael paused. The trail was cleared, yes, but artlessly. The Tenders had always nurtured the growth of this place, working with the spirits of the grove to nudge the growth of plants into an aesthetically pleasing and seamless pathway. Whomever had passed this way recently had simply hacked their way through rosebush and blackberry alike, doing their best to maintain the illusion of careful pruning.
There was no sign at all of Root, and Michael wondered if the spirit had gone dormant for the winter. That didn’t make sense, though. The old creature was the guardian of this grove, and such beings did not sleep at their duty.
Michael knelt to look at the stalk of a severed branch. Recent. He reached across his hip, and the soft ringing of his glassblade—Heart of Embers—echoed in his ears. The red blade of the weapon gleamed in the dark, its hilt stamped with the Schwan seal, drops of rain chiming off the weapon’s unmarred edge in a chorus of tiny bells. Heartened slightly, Michael made his way towards the clearing, stepping into the open circle. The rain had started to let up, and overhead there was a small break in the clouds, allowing moonlight to filter down, silvering the edges of trunk and branch.
Someone had altered the layout of the rose bushes. At first Michael wondered if he was just imagining things, but here and there the signs of careful pruning were interrupted by places where the branches had been hacked back, artlessly altering the living facet of the ritual circle. He stepped closer, something else was different, as well. The bushes had been moved back several feet. Though this had been done professionally. Perhaps by the Tenders themselves? Michael frowned. But why?
Turning with dread to towards the tree, he summoned his Sixth Sense, surely close enough now for it to make at least some difference in what he could see. Michael sucked in a breath. In his altered vision, the tree was covered from root to branch in complex markings that stretched up and up, far beyond the limits of his vision, towards the dark sky. This was new. He took a step forward, sword still in hand, and slowly tried to make sense of what he was looking at, silently cursing himself for paying so little attention to his lessons on ritual magic.
The intervening years had taught him some things, but surely he would’ve known more if he’d listened when the more knowledgeable were talking. Walking in a circle around the Founder’s Tree, one thing stood out immediately: the spiral of mystic writing simply ended near the base, with room left for more, and that couldn’t be a simple accident. Something this vast, this complicated, drawing on the ambient aether of the entire clearing and the forest around would’ve required every inch of surface upon the Founder’s Tree. That it wasn’t—
A branch snapped behind him, and Michael’s Sixth Sense ignited. He spun on his heel and dropped his weight, the heavy force of a thick wood limb smashing into the Founder’s Tree where his head had been a ghost of a second ago. The motion cost him his balance, and Michael careened sideways, fighting to keep his feet.
Root had approached without sound. He stood before him, a familiar, tall figure that had once been made of wood and earth, roots winding about his frame in a lattice of growth that was no longer living. Once, Root had been a beautiful, warm creature brimming with life. Voice kind, eyes gentle, hair made of leaves and limbs flower-dappled and draped with moss.
What stood before him now, pulling its immense fist back from the Founder’s Tree was a rotted husk of spirit, bark flaking, white leaves wilted and flowers dead. Root’s eyes were hollow, dead sockets bleeding black sap. The thing that vaguely resembled the one-time guardian paused.
Michael breathed hard, fighting down the shaking. “… Root?”
The dead guardian rushed him, mouth opening in a scream like the creaking of breaking, rotted wood.
Durability, Strength. Enhancing magic poured through Michael’s limbs, strengthening his body and his movements. He swept a foot backwards as the creature came at him. The glowing sword rang like a bell as Root’s other arm formed black, obsidian talons and raked them across the flat of the blade.
The monster reared back at the contact, its limb smoking where glass and spirit-flesh had touched. Root landed in a crouch and sprang forward again. Michael stepped sideways, barely evading the strike that tore up turf and broke the stone beneath. His throat dried up and his heart pounded, fighting to see the monster the one-time guardian had become for what it was. The words left his mouth without permission, even as he knew they were pointless: nothing could bring the spirit back from the thing that had been done to him.
“Root,” he breathed. “Please, be something else, be anything else. Not this. Not you.”
The monster could not hear him, Michael knew. It was not alive. Not sensate, and only one thing could’ve done this. Michael set his stance and held his sword out before him. “Come to me then,” he breathed. “And I will end this misery for us both.”
Root charged again. Michael dropped his weight and swept his sword high, deflecting a punch. He let go of the pommel with his left hand, summoning Wielder’s fire. The creature blurred past his defenses—Guides, it was fast—and slammed a limb of solid hardwood into his ribs.
Without his durability that hit would’ve caved in Michael’s chest. As it was, the impact lifted him off the ground and his breath left him in an explosive gasp. He summoned it back as a second blow of jagged oak sliced through his shirt and drew blood. Root’s carcass swiped at him again and he barely got out of the way. The blow hit the ground and shook it.
Michael swept his left foot back, brought his sword high over his head, and snapped the razor-sharp edge downward in a blurred cut that left after-streaks across his vision. Root leaped upwards, straight into the descending blade, and let out a shriek of rending wood as it cut into his broad, pale shoulder.
Michael stepped forward with his left foot, slammed his palm into the monster’s middle. Flames filled Michael’s eyes, and he let loose the biggest burst of Wielder’s fire he could summon. It roared up the spirit’s deadwood form and the remnants of Root let out an anguished scream that cut like knives across Michael’s ears. It stepped back, flailing burning limbs, and Michael forced himself up and forward, cutting up and under the arms with Heart of Embers. The edge of the glassblade flashed through its body. Carved it. Then its burning form burst into a thousand points of dissipating light, leaving wisps of fire to drift towards the damp ground.
Michael staggered and nearly fell. He was bleeding, and there was no Mender to which he could turn. He was in the middle of a public park. He had to get out of here. He sheathed his blade into the void and staggered out of the clearing, moving through the woods until he found the base of the path and the blessed pavement.
He didn’t know how he made it out of the park, but by the time he saw the lights of the houses lining the road outside Point Defiance, his vision was starting to blur, and his footsteps were stumbling. There. His truck was just up ahead. He felt his hand grasp the cold metal of the hood and he fumbled in his pocket for the keys. A tinkling noise. How had they ended up on the ground? He reached down, bracing himself against the vehicle and—
—And he was slumped against the truck. The world was fading. He needed to get in the vehicle. Couldn’t afford to stall. Couldn’t afford to—
Darkness.
Michael’s eyes opened, and he wasn’t in the street, nor in his truck. The ceiling over his head was plaster set with a slowly oscillating ceiling fan. Trying to stare at the blades made him dizzy. His wrists weren’t bound, and neither were his legs. That was something, but he still didn’t know where he was, nor what he was likely to encounter when he moved. Reaching out with his Sixth Sense, he felt three presences within close distance of him. Two very strong, one faint. His use of power must’ve alerted them, because a male voice addressed him directly the moment he did it.
“You’re safe, Michael Schwan. I won’t say you’re in the company of friends, but at least of people who don’t want to hurt you.”
“You mean if I move, nobody’s going to stab me?” Michael said to the room.
“Oh, there’s enough power in this room to put you down, I think,” the voice said. “But you’d probably hurt all of us bad enough for trying to be really undesirable. In any case, you should be able to sit up. I’ve seen to the worst of your wounds. Careful, though. I’m not the gentlest Mender, and the energy drain from all that accelerated healing is gonna hit you pretty hard when you move.”
Michael sat up too quickly. He got a vague impression of two people sitting near him, one behind them leaning broodingly against the wall, and then a surge of dizziness and nausea overtook him, and he lurched sideways, spotted a waste bin, and puked directly into it.
A new voice—this one feminine and deep—sighed. “Well, at least he got it in the trash.” Someone got up and he saw a brown-skinned hand pull the bin away from him once he’d finished throwing up. “Rubin, dear,” Michael heard her say. “Go throw that mess away.”
“Sure Mom,” said the third voice, male, maybe teenaged.
The feminine voice muttered under her breath, “Rich white boy’s gotta touch wet paint. Every. Damn. Time.”
Slowly, Michael managed to right himself, pulling up to a sitting position and wiping his mouth on a paper towel someone handed him. After a second or two he was able to take stock of the others in the room with him.
A man sat on the couch opposite him. He was tall, more lean than bulky, with a sinewy sort of strength in his long limbs. He wore a denim jacket and what might’ve been BDU pants, heavy combat boots on his feet. His dark hair had gone significantly gray and was wound up in a knot behind his head. At first Michael didn’t recognize him, then he recognized the sword resting across his knees. It was a blue glassblade, of the unadorned sort issued to retainers, rather than the more ornate and custom ones carried by royals. The hilt had a cloth wrap around it, covering the seal of the family the bearer had once served, and awkwardly carved into the flat was a name: Double Standard.
Michael might not have known the man by sight, but he knew the name of the sword. He looked at the man and said “Carlyle.”
“Hello Michael,” Carlyle said. “It’s nice to be formally introduced.”
“Look at you, being friends,” said the woman to Carlyle’s right. She was brown-skinned, somewhere in her mid-fifties if he had to guess, dressed comfortably and holding a mug of something hot and steaming in hands adorned with several rings. Her white-streaked dark hair was carefully coifed and wound up at the top of her head, a few locks drifting down to brush her rounded shoulders. Her eyes were the darkest he’d ever seen, and they watched him with a sort of amusement that made him distinctly uncomfortable. Like he was a mouse caught in a cat’s claws.
“Michael Schwan,” she said after a moment. “Well, having you under my roof is certainly an irony I never expected.”
Michael straightened slightly, feeling the discomfort creeping slowly under his skin. “I’m sorry,” his tone was sharper than it probably should’ve been. “But have we met?”
“Oh no,” the woman said with a small laugh. “Definitely not, though I saw you at a distance a few times. Your father, though. He and I were—” she sipped her drink. “—acquainted.”
Michael frowned. “What are you talking about?” He asked.
“Your father ordered me killed, oh, years and years and years ago,” she said, putting her mug down on a side-table, then staring at him with a deeply amused gleam in her eyes. Letting him roast over what felt like a fire of his own making. “… But that’s all water under the bridge, now. The son is not the father, and Carlyle tells me you’re in quite a bind.”
“We found you by your truck,” Carlyle said. “Annie said you’d be easy to track down, and she wasn’t wrong. You’re going to want to see to that, if you hope to keep a low profile while you’re out and about. She said you were looking for me.”
“You know Annie?” Michael was incredulous.
Carlyle shook his head. “Everyone knows Annie, Michael.”
“I never would’ve guessed,” Michael said.
“Exactly. She prefers it that way. In any case, I didn’t expect to find you unconscious that quickly.”
“I’m a go-getter,” Michael grunted.
“I had to help haul you inside,” the third voice said, and Michael now saw it came from a teenage boy, the woman’s son, he must’ve been. He looked maybe a year or two older than Gabe. The boy folded dark arms across his broad chest and frowned. “You’re not light.”
“Annie said you were looking for Tiffany,” Carlyle said. He leaned forward. “And given that a last Schwan seems to have come back from the dead to look for her, when Annie told me I knew I had to find you. You clearly know something the rest of our world doesn’t.” His face grew worried. “I need you to tell me what that is, because word of all that death is spreading through the city, and things are starting to unravel. The Council is blaming the Commoners for the murders and the Regnants are pushing for a Crackdown. Among the Commoners our own factions are starting to turn on each other. Daphne’s Reformists are blaming the Outsiders, there’s trouble in the neighborhood watches, the Undercourt hasn’t said shit but if things get bloody, they’ll jump at the chance to fight. I’ve been working with Max’s Couriers to keep our factions talking to each other instead of in-fighting, but I need to know what Tiffany and her fellow dead were mixed up with. I need to know what the fuck happened.”
The vomit of information from Carlyle was annoying, though none of it was surprising. He wracked his brain for some of the names. Someone named Daphne was leading the Reformists now. Had she been in charge before his family’s death? No idea. Everything the neighborhood watches and the Undercourt did was illegal, but it wasn’t like Michael cared anymore. That Carlyle was working with the Couriers—who ferried information between factions—wasn’t surprising.
“She was serving my family in secret,” Michael said. “Continuing to carry out orders my brother gave her and her fellows before he died.” Everything from the tree was rushing back now. He didn’t try to hide the urgency in his voice anymore. “But none of that matters now. I killed a Hollowed in Point Defiance Park, Carlyle.”
He let that sit for a moment, watching sudden shock and fear spread across the faces of the others. “And where there’s one there will be more, until the thing that made them is destroyed. Nothing else matters now. Only that there’s a Vacant One loose in Tacoma.”
He looked each of them in the eye in turn. Nobody was amused anymore. Michael nodded, then said “I have to track it down and destroy it, or everyone is going to die.”
And that meant he needed to warn Agnes. To warn the others. Michael reached into his pocket, pulling out his phone. He needed to call them. Needed to tell them where he was. Needed to—
—Oh no.
Michael stared down at his hand. The screen of the phone he’d brought with him was smashed completely to pieces.
END PART ONE.
There will be a brief, fifteen minute intermission.