The Dragon knelt beside me. He took up the song of an enchantment that rang vaguely familiar in my ears, something I had heard once long before: the spring after the Green Year, I remembered, when he’d come to help the fields recover. He’d brought us water from the Spindle, then, with channels that dug themselves from the river all the way to our burned and barren fields. But this time the narrow channels ran away from the heart-tree instead, and as I chanted the water out of the roots, they carried the water far away, and the ground around the roots began to parch into desert, mud cracking into dust and sand.
Then Kasia caught us both by the arms and nearly levered us up from the ground, pulling us stumbling forward. The walkers we’d passed in the trees were coming into the clearing now, a whole host of them: as though they’d been lying in wait for us. The silver mantis had lost a limb but still pressed the attack, darting side-to-side and lashing out with spiked arms wherever an opening afforded. The horses Janos had worried about were nearly all down or fled by now. Prince Marek fought on foot, shoulder-to-shoulder with sixteen men in a row, their shields overlapping into a wall and the Falcon still lashing fire from behind them, but we were being crowded in, ever closer to the trunk. The heart-tree’s leaves were rustling in the wind, louder and louder, a dreadful whispering, and we were nearly at the foot of the tree. I dragged in a breath and almost vomited again from the sweet dreadful stink of the fruit.
One of the walkers tried edging around the side of the line, craning its head around sideways to see us. Kasia snatched a sword from the ground, fallen from some soldier’s hand, and swung it in a wild sideways arc. The blade struck the walker’s side and splintered through it with a crack like a breaking twig. It fell into a twitching heap.
The Dragon was coughing beside me from the stench of the fruit. But we took up our chant again, desperately, and dragged more water from the roots. Here close to the tree, the thicker roots resisted at first, but together our spells pulled the water from them, from the earth, and the dirt began to crumble in around the tree. Its branches were shivering: water was beginning to come rolling down the trunk in thick green-stained droplets, too. Leaves were beginning to dry up and shed like rain from above us, but then I heard a terrible scream: the silver mantis had seized another one of the men from out of the line, and this time it did not kill him. It bit off the hand that held the sword, and flung him to the walkers.
The walkers reached up and plucked fruits off the tree and crammed them into his mouth. He screamed around them, choking, but they pressed more upon him and forced his jaw shut around them, juice spilling in rivulets down his face. His whole body arched, thrashing in their grip. They held him upside down over the earth. The mantis jabbed him in the throat with one sharp point of its claw, and the blood came spurting out of him and watered the dry parched roots like rain.
The tree made a sighing, shivering sound as thin lines of red flushed down the roots and faded into the silver of its trunk. I was sobbing in horror, watching the life drain out of his face—a knife took him in the chest, sinking into his heart: Prince Marek had thrown it.
But much of our work had already been undone, and the walkers were ringing us all around, waiting, hungrily it now seemed: the men drew closer together, panting. The Dragon cursed under his breath; he turned back to the tree and used another spell, one I had seen him use before to form his potion-bottles. He cast it now and reached down into the desiccated sand around our feet and began to pull out ropes and skeins of glowing glass. He flung them in swooping heaps onto the exposed roots, the falling leaves. Small fires began to catch around us, putting up a haze of smoke.
I was shaking, dazed with horror and blood. Kasia pushed me behind her, the sword in her hand, sheltering me even while tears were sliding down her face, too. “Look out!” she shouted, and I turned to see a great branch above the Dragon’s head crack. It came falling heavily onto his shoulder and knocked him forward.
He caught himself instinctively on the trunk, dropping the rope of glass he was holding. He tried to pull away, but the tree was already seizing him, bark growing over his hands. “No!” I screamed, reaching for him.
He managed to drag one arm free at the cost of the other, silver bark climbing to the elbow, roots whipping themselves out of the ground and twining about his leg, dragging him in closer. They were tearing at his clothes. He seized a pouch at his waist, jerked the strap loose, and thrust something into my hands: it gurgled, a vial glowing fierce red-violet. It was fire-heart, a dram of it, and he shook me by the arm. “Now, you fool! If it takes me, you’re all dead! Burn it and run!”
I looked up from the bottle and stared at him. He meant me to fire the tree, I realized; he meant me to burn the tree—and him with it. “Do you think I’d rather live like this?” he said to me, his voice tight and clenched, as though he was speaking past horror: the bark had already swallowed one of his legs, and climbed nearly to the shoulder.
Kasia was next to me, her face pale and stricken; she said, “Nieshka, it’s worse than dying. It’s worse.”
I stood with the vial clutched in my hand, glowing between my fingers, and then I put my hand on his shoulder and said to him, “Ulozishtus. The purging spell. Cast it with me.”
He stared at me. Then he gave one short jerk of a nod. “Give her the vial,” he said, between his clenched teeth. I gave Kasia the fire-heart and gripped the Dragon’s hand, and together we said the spell: I whispered, “Ulozishtus, ulozishtus,” a steady drumbeat, and then he joined in with me, reciting all the long careful song of it. But I didn’t let the purging magic flow: I held it back. In my mind I built a dam before the power of it, let our joined spell fill up a vast lake within me as the working built and built.
The swelling heat of it filled me, burning bright, almost unbearable. I couldn’t breathe, my lungs crushed against my rib cage; my heart strained to beat. I couldn’t see: the fighting went on somewhere behind me, a distant clamoring only: shouts, the eerie clatter of the walkers, the hollow ring of swords. It was coming closer and closer still. I felt Kasia’s back pressed to mine; she was making herself a final shield. The fire-heart was singing cheerful and hungry in the vial she held, hoping to be let out, hoping to devour us all, almost comforting.
I held the working as long as I could, until the Dragon’s voice failed, and then I opened my eyes again. The bark had climbed over his neck, up his cheek. It had sealed over his mouth, it was creeping around his eye. He squeezed my hand once, and then I poured the power through him, down the half-formed channel to the devouring tree.