And then he reached the tree line and was looking out at Bowhill.
Nestled in the dip between hills, out of sight of the village, the farmhouse where he’d lived was now a ruin. The roofing had collapsed. The door was a black rectangle that the wind howled through. Nature had begun to reclaim the place and the paths were a tangle.
He took a step towards it and his foot hit unyielding wood. Logs in a discarded pile, grown over with wet moss – his skin prickled. He’d dropped that bundle of logs when he’d heard the first screams and started sprinting towards the house. Drawing in a shallow breath, he looked up towards his destination—
He couldn’t avoid the open now, but there was no one in sight. That dark sentinel on the ridge might see him – see a speck break free from the trees and start moving towards the farmhouse – and that thought sent its shiver through him. But instinctively he knew that Simon was there, beyond the farmhouse, on that patch of earth where her blood had run.
All Will had to do was go forward. One step. Another. Back to those last moments, like a door he didn’t want to open. The blood soaking his clothes; himself gasping for breath; the terrible look in her eyes as she—
Something crunched under his feet. A strange, unexpected sound, as if he had stepped onto gravel. He looked down.
The ground under him was black, charcoal shapes that crumbled to ash under his feet, the black earth extending around him in a wide circle, scoured like the ground after a firepit.
Beware the dead grass.
In cold terror he spun, and saw a Remnant, its pale and terrible face so close that he could see the thin veins of black that crept up its neck towards its mouth. Its hand reached for him; the black gauntlet reached out for him, and he drew his sword to knock it away, but his blow glanced off the metal without any effect, and he stumbled back.
It was reaching out again. A cold wave of terror passed over him. Do not let them touch you, Justice had said. Will had watched green leaves withering before his eyes, dying from a single touch. It was worse – it was so much worse up close. You could almost taste the death, the grass blackening with the Remnant’s every step, as if everything the Remnants touched fell to decay and death.
Now it simply grabbed his sword and jerked him forward. Death grip, Will thought, panicked, knowing that its touch would rot and wither his flesh. In the next second, its gauntlet closed around his throat.
At once, Bowhill disappeared, and he was somewhere else – an ancient battlefield under a red sky, surrounded by the clashes and cries of fighting. Before him towered a true Dark Guard in full armour, not Simon’s poor imitation playing dress-up with a rusty gauntlet. It was the armour the Remnants wore, whole and unblemished. And now he confronted its bearer. A terrifying fighter of immense power, with an armoured hand around his throat. They were locked together, the Dark Guard’s eyes burning into his.
Will felt its battering power and expected to die in its grip.
But it was the Dark Guard who gave a terrible cry of recognition, letting him go and cowering back.
Will acted on instinct, not knowing much about sword work but remembering Violet saying, Up and under the plate. He drove the blade forward.
The vision stopped.
He was panting, sprawled on his hands and knees, on the ground back at Bowhill. The Remnant lay beside him, with Will’s sword rising from his chest like a cross marking a grave. A circle of dying grass was spreading outward from the gauntlet. I killed him. It felt unreal and sudden. Will lifted his hand to his own throat.
The Remnant’s touch should have killed him as it had killed the grass, but there was nothing to show for its grip besides normal bruising: there was no crumbling ash, no black ring of dead flesh. Nothing.
He remembered his fingertips brushing the Shadow Stone, the Elder Steward crying out, Don’t touch it! Even the briefest touch will kill! But he had touched it. The truth swelled, one more confirmation of the awful knowledge that he hadn’t wanted to face. Nausea rose in him and he vomited onto the black earth. It was long moments before he sat back onto his knees.
He looked at the Remnant, and then, before he could let himself think about what he was doing, he reached out, took hold of its gauntlet, and pulled it off.
Nothing happened. Will didn’t wither or crumble, nor did the dead man change. The dead man … for he was a man, or he had been once. He had lived a life before he’d put on the gauntlet. Will had half hoped that the black tendrils would withdraw from the man’s too-pale skin, miraculously freeing him – that he might even come shuddering back to life now that the gauntlet no longer controlled him. But he didn’t. He stayed dead. Dead as the grass, staring up at the sky.