Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-1.39: Departure, Duty, Dream

“Ready?” Edgar asked. The monk breathed hard, his pudgy features covered in dirt and sweat, but his expression remained determined.

I nodded, and we both lifted the heavy corpse of Caelfall’s innkeeper into the pit. It settled into place in the darkness below, half hidden in the failing light.

The mist had burned away, and the onset of dusk cast the marshes in a somber red light. I stood behind the village chapel with Edgar, and there were already many fresh graves. We were both filthy with gore and mud, and neither of us cared.

We’d survived. This was the least we could do for those who hadn’t.

“You didn’t know them,” Edgar said suddenly, as we stared down into the most recent pit. “They were strangers.”

Strange he asked me now, after we’d been at it most of two days. I shrugged and grabbed a spade off the ground, starting in on filling the grave. How could I explain it to him? That I was sworn to protect everyone, and I’d failed.

I owed far more than a few days of hard, dirty labor.

There was work I couldn’t help with and didn’t have time to remain for. The graves needed to be soaked in blessed water. Gravestones had to be carved and set over the mounds, each inscribed with lines of scripture and blessed to draw in the ghosts of the dead and hold them, so they wouldn’t fade or be eaten in the wilderness. It was painstaking work, and the monk might not have the strength.

I didn’t mention as much. I just helped, knowing it wasn’t enough.

After we’d finished the most recent grave, the shuffling of cloth from the edge of the graveyard drew my attention. I turned to see Lisette standing there, clad in the same humble brown robes as usual, a heavy satchel tied to her back. She lingered by the gate.

I looked around, but saw no signs of the old doctor. I walked over to her.

“He isn’t with me,” Lisette said, having seen my survey. “He’s waiting out on the road with the wagon and Brume.” She waved off toward the village.

“Then why are you here?” I asked. I didn’t mean to be unkind. I didn’t blame the girl for anything, but her power made me wary. She’d been strong, and she had nearly gotten the better of me twice.

“I wanted to help.” Lisette said. “I’m ordained. I can hallow the graves.” She licked her lips and shuffled. “It’s… the least I can do.”

Her next words mirrored the bitterness I’d held within over the past two days. “We didn’t help anyone here.”

I nodded, not arguing, and let her go to the monk. They conversed for a while, then Lisette began to walk among the graves, her auremark in hand. Edgar marched behind her, having produced a jar of incense hanging from a long chain, which he swung back and forth. A pleasant scent, I imagined, to draw in the lost souls.

I didn’t bother mentioning most of those ghosts would probably be too mutilated to go anywhere, and that the church would need to be abandoned. Oftentimes, such rituals are for the living as much as the dead.

If they did draw in the dead, it would be to bind them beneath stone and dirt so they couldn’t do harm as much as to give them peace. Would the Shepherds of Draubard even wander through this accursed land, to lead the dead to where they needed to go?

“It was good of you,” a voice behind me said. “To stay and help bury them.”

I turned to see a shadowed shape lurking at the edge of a small copse of trees beyond the graveyard, leaning against a tree. There wasn’t much daylight left, but Catrin still needed to be wary of it.

“I’d have helped,” she said. “But…” she waved toward the setting sun with one hand. Though her expression remained nonchalant, I saw the tension in her shoulders. The frustration.

“You did help,” I said. “We both noticed there were more graves dug this morning. That was you, wasn’t it?”

Catrin shrugged, not meeting my eyes. “Maybe it was the elves?”

I just snorted and moved to stand next to her, folding my arms as I watched the young cleric work. I didn’t mention that I’d spotted Catrin helping dig graves the night before. I didn’t mention that I’d seen her conversing with some of the ghosts, either. They seemed more comfortable with her than with me. Kindred spirits.

One of them had worn amber preoster robes. Had either of them managed to find some closure, or was that just wishful thinking?

“This was a dark thing, big man.” Catrin sighed. “I feel like we just watched a tragedy happen from the sidelines.”

“That’s how it often is,” I said. “I wish…”

When I paused, Catrin stirred at my side. “What is it?”

I shook my head. “When I started on this path, it was to punish people like Orson. But, I thought, it was also to stop them. To prevent things like this. But almost every time, I feel like I’m just putting down a mad dog after they’ve already spread their sickness into the world. It’s like trying to stop a river with my hands.”

Catrin thought it over a moment, idly brushing the dagger at her belt. She wore the yellow peasant’s dress she’d had the night I’d first met her now, rather than the ruined courtly gown she’d taken from the castle.

I liked this dress better. It suited her, and she seemed more comfortable in it.

That’s a strange thought. Put that out of your head, Hewer.

“I’m not going to pretend like I understand all this stuff about elves and holy knights and angels,” Catrin said. “Sounds like madness. But there was something about you. I saw it that first night when I took you to the castle. Like you’d just stepped out of a story.”

“Sad story,” I noted, eyeing the graves.

“So what’s next for the mighty Headsman?” Catrin asked.

“Please don’t call me that,” I sighed. “It’s just Alken.”

Catrin nodded. “Alright then. What’s next for you, Alken?”

I closed my eyes, breathing in the last of the fading daylight. “I wander. I wait for the Onsolain to send me some sign or messenger. Then I do this again.” Less badly next time, I thought.

“And this demon?” Catrin asked. “All those other bastards who were part of this?”

I glanced toward the castle. “I don’t know. I’m sworn by oath to my duty, and the consequences for ignoring it would be… unpleasant.”

Catrin was quiet a moment. Then, as though tossing a leaf onto the wind she said, “Let me see what I can dig up. All sorts of strange sorts and stories pass through the Backroad. I’ll keep an ear to the wind, see if something of your Council of Darkness comes up.”

I winced. “That’s a terrible name.”

“Works though, doesn’t it?” Catrin laughed, then shifted closer to me. I noted it and went on guard. Not because I thought I was in danger, but because I sensed something in the movement, and didn’t want to encourage her.

I had no room for it in my life.

If Catrin noted my distancing, she ignored it. She stepped in front of me and brushed my left arm with her hand, at the crook of the elbow where she’d fed from. I shivered at the feel of her cold skin, but she didn’t take it further.

“When I tasted you…” Catrin looked up to meet my eyes. Even though my bangs half concealed them, she squinted as though glancing into a sunbeam. “When I had your blood in me, I got a bit more too. I felt you, Alken.”

She stepped closer, squeezing my elbow. “You’re in so much pain. I saw it that first night, just from watching you, but I know it now. What happened to you? Who are you?”

A ghost, I thought. A phantom, just like Olliard said.

Melodramatic, and not an answer she’d accept.

“That’s a long story,” I told her, unsure if I’d say more.

Catrin recognized the deflection, and to my relief respected it. She drifted away, the movement casual as if she were just adjusting her balance. “I’ll teach you how to find the inn. There’s a trick to it, but once you know the way you can find it any time, any place. I’m there most times.”

She didn’t quite keep the hopeful note from her next words. “You’ll stop by sometime, right?”

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I nodded. “Seems like it might be a useful place to gather information.” And maybe I’ll even tell you my story, I thought.

“That it is,” Catrin agreed with a wry smile. “Just don’t come in swinging that fancy cutter, alright? Hard for my like to find steady work.”

The sun set, casting the land in shadow.

“Alken…” Catrin folded her arms as though cold. “It’s strange to say it, but… I feel like the world got darker here. Like nothing’s ever going to be the same again.”

I knew what she meant. Only, that realization was ten years gone for me.

I tried returning to the Hall of Irn Bale, to return the elf’s armor and perhaps find some answers. I gave up after two days of wandering the woods. Whatever paths had brought me to that house, they’d been closed.

As dusk approached at the end of the second day, a ghostly music lured me deep into the woods. I knew to be cautious, but followed it all the same.

The song, played on the strings of a lute, brought me to a stream fed by a short waterfall. On the smooth rocks along the brief cliff sat an elf. Dressed in a white gown of ancient design pinned at one shoulder, she strummed a lute of inhumanly fine craft.

I stood by the stream, listening to the song until it ended. “Your father’s left these woods?”

The oradyn’s daughter smile, opening just her left eye, the golden one. It gleamed like a fresh minted coin in the sun dappled woods.

“Yes. He has pulled his hall deeper into the Wend. Why did you return?” She laughed girlishly. “I imagine it wasn’t for my music.”

I hesitated. The excuse about returning the oradyn’s gift seemed shallow, now. “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “I suppose… I’d hoped for more closure.”

The elf maid leapt gracefully off her high rock, her dragonfly wings fluttering as she alighted lightly on the grass on sandaled feet. The wind from her wings kissed my face, tussling my hair.

She stared at me with her mismatched eyes, her expression unreadable. “I am Tzanith, daughter of Irn Bale and Irn Raya, heir to all their legacy. I say this, Alken Hewer — you will be hard pressed to find closure in this war. It has endured for many an age.”

“Do you have a message from them?” I asked.

Tzanith’s smile turned sad. “From the Choir? I’m afraid not. That is not my role.”

She tucked the beautiful lute under one arm and stepped forward. I remembered her attempt at seduction from before and kept very still, not wanting to invite a repeat performance. But this time, she didn’t seem the flirtatious youth anymore. She seemed very much the immortal, seeing more than I could even with my blessings.

She reached out and ran her fingers over the black iron rings of the armor her father had given me. “My mother’s mail.” she spoke in a near whisper.

“I am willing to return it,” I said. “Now our enemy is dead.”

She shook her head, causing her long blue braid to swing. “No. This was a gift, and it is yours. I do not wish to go as my mother did. I love music, and laughter. Perhaps, in some age far away, I will be the warrior. My people have time to be many things throughout our lives.”

“About before,” I blurted. “When I sent you away from the room, I—”

She laughed without ire. “I was very angry! I considered cursing you, but…”

She became serious again. “I am not so young that I do not recognize a broken heart when I see it. You did not reject me because I did not please you, Alken Hewer, but because you still see another in your dreams. Is that not so?”

I couldn’t reply. My throat felt tight, and I didn’t want to risk finding out what might spill from it if I opened my mouth.

“And yet…” Her eyes went down to my right hand, where my ring rested. “You deny yourself your dreams. Is it not better to remember, even if there is pain?”

I ran a thumb over the ivory band. “This is better. Safer.”

Tzanith turned, her long braid swinging. Then, in a flurry of dragonfly wings, she returned to the rocks. After adjusting her dress and folding her legs, she placed her fingers to the strings of the lute.

“I think I will make a song for this thing. For the lord of Caelfall, for what he became, and what he might have been.”

“And how many lives of men will pass before it’s finished?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

The bard only laughed.

Weeks passed before I received the message I’d been waiting for.

I’d strayed far from the dark woods and haunted marshes of Caelfall. I didn’t know the name of the forest I’d found myself in, but it was depthless and dark, quiet as a grave.

I sat by a crackling fire within the ruins of an old temple. Some precursor to the Church, I imagined, back when many Onsolain did not have that name, and were worshipped as gods without a celestial queen to lead them. The ancient edifice had worn down to little more than a few crumbling walls and sunken foundation.

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But power remained in the patch of hallowed ground. Enough to let me rest.

The forest ghosts lurked in the darkness beyond my camp’s light, pooling in murmuring schools like amorphous fish along the edges of the ruin walls. Some of them piled in the broken gaps just beyond the wall, staring at me with faces which seemed lit from no apparent source, eyes bloodshot and lidless as they glared at me.

It was a moonless night, overcast, but the dead seemed to produce an unearthly light all their own.

Faen Orgis lay at my side. I had not slept in some days. I ran a thumb over my ring. Red patterns like blood swam through its black stone.

“Failed again,” the forest ghosts whispered. “Failed us. Didn’t save us. Let that thing rise out of our corpses like a maggot.”

Some of the ghosts were from the village I’d left behind weeks before, clinging to my shadow. Lisette and Edgar hadn’t managed to bind all of them after all.

“Perhaps you hoped it would be her?”

My head shot up, looking for the source of that last voice. I didn’t find it, and settled back down.

“I did not want that,” I hissed at the darkness.

The darkness only laughed.

“You shouldn’t talk to them,” a voice more tangible than the forest spirits said. “It only makes them stronger.”

I looked up from the fire to see a figure leaning against one of the ruined walls, just outside the true radius of the firelight. A short man in his late thirties, with a homely face covered in dense brown stubble, a mop of hair loosely tied behind his head. He wore studded leathers over a lean frame.

I could almost see the stone wall through him.

“Donnelly,” I greeted the ghost. “You can share my fire. Just you.”

Donnelly lurched forward and sat cross legged across the fire from me, holding his hands out. It wasn’t a cold night — we were well into Summer — but he shivered as violently as if he’d come out of a blizzard, shaking his hands in gratitude for the warmth. Immediately he began to grow more substantial, until he seemed the man he’d been in life. Below average in height, all wiry muscle and cocky attitude, his peasant’s features tanned by sun.

He didn’t much look like a hero of the Ardent Bough, or the herald of a divine court. And yet, he was both.

“Thanks,” the rogue said. “Been a while since I got some flame in me. Thought I was starting to fade, like that lot.” He jerked a thumb toward the shadows.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked, tossing a twig into the fire. Sparks danced into the air, and a few Wil-O’ Wisps emerged with them to twirl playfully. They’d followed me from Caelfall, too, though most had wandered off into the wilds over the weeks.

A sour expression crossed the ghost’s bony face. “Working. Feels like all Urn’s bloody burning, some days. Parts of it still are, in truth…”

His gray eyes went distant, then snapped to me. “I heard you did a job for a member of the Choir.”

I nodded, and told him about what had happened in Caelfall. I left some details out, such as my alliance with a dhampir and confrontation with the itinerant monster hunter.

“Damn…” Donnelly folded his arms, rubbing warmth into them. “You really think it’s one of the demons old Reynard had on his leash?”

I shrugged. “It felt like it. My powers aren’t always reliable. Could have been a stray, or something lurking in the Wend. But I think… I think it was one of the monsters the Traitor released, yes.”

I shook my head, setting my jaw. “We should have worked harder to seal them all.”

“Without ol’ Tuvon, it’s a tall order.” Donnelly shrugged, and I had to suppress a smile at his casual mention of the elven king.

“I want you to ask them to let me hunt those other Recusants,” I told him.

Donnelly’s expression fell into neutrality. “You know it doesn’t work that way, Al.”

“Tell them what happened,” I insisted. “This is what I’m meant for. I need to follow through on what happened at that lake.”

“You’re not a knight anymore,” Donnelly said bluntly. He ignored the angry look that passed over my face, holding up a hand to stall my next words. “You’re the Headsman. Your job is to carry out sentences of execution when and where the Choir tells you to, just like my job is to be their courier.”

He shrugged. “Neither of us have a fine gig, kid.”

I scoffed at that. I was old as Donnelly had been when he’d died.

The ghost sighed. “I’ll tell them what you’ve told me, but no promises. You know the Onsolain don’t see everything. Besides…”

He hesitated. I leaned forward and clasped my hands, eyes on the fire to watch the wisps play. “You have another mark for me.”

Donnelly spread out his hands in a what can I do? gesture. “Guilty.”

A while passed before I replied. To his credit, Donnelly didn’t try to make excuses or hurry me.

“Tell me,” I said after several minutes.

“They want you to head west, to the Bannerlands,” Donnelly said. “Can’t say much more as of yet.”

I nodded. It was often like this. I’d be given a direction, then either perform a rite of communion or wait for some other message to get the details. Sometimes it would take weeks of following vague signs and portents before I found myself in the right position to get the full picture.

“That’s a populated country,” I said after some thought. “Not the kind of place I’d think they would send me. Lot of towns. Lot of nobles.” Lot of soldiers, I thought darkly. I wouldn’t be able to vanish into the wilderness so easily in a realm that densely populated.

“Even still,” Donnelly said unapologetically, “that’s where you’re bound. Once you’ve crossed the border, perform the rites. You know the drill.”

His eyes went to the woods. “Too many ears here. No telling if any of these wild ghosts are reporting to some necromancer somewhere. Better to give you the rest of it in a church, or in a dream. Either way, head west.”

Donnelly left not long after. Vanished like a mirage as was his wont. That suited my mood. The ghosts whispered in the shadows, wild chimera hooted in the deeper darkness beyond, and the silent clouds rolled above. The whole world seemed to be made of night and monsters.

Sometimes, it could be hard to remember there were other little islands of light beyond all that fang-filled black.

I sat by the fire for a long while, thinking. The wisps kept it warm. Handy little creatures. Part of me had been glad of their company, but they were fey. No telling when they’d wander off. Perhaps, when Irn Bale had closed the ways to his hall, they’d been stranded.

“You can stay with me long as you like,” I said to them, not sure they understood. “Might see some nasty things, though.”

One little mote of faerie-light danced toward my face, spun around my head once, then returned to the fire. I almost smiled. Almost.

Part of me regretted not asking Catrin to stick with me. I think she might have, had I asked. Of most anyone I’d met, she may not have minded my grim work.

But she’d also need to feed, and I wasn’t willing to let her use me that way, or other innocents in my presence. Better for her to stay at her strange devil’s inn, where she could get her blood from those who offered it freely.

It wouldn’t have worked. We would have resented one another, eventually.

I tossed another twig into the fire, watching the tiny lights dance through the dark until they cooled. I lifted my right hand and ran the thumb of my left over my ring. The stone had gone almost entirely to red over the past weeks. It had fed well.

I slipped it off my finger, settled against the shattered temple wall at my back, and closed my eyes.

I let myself dream.

End of Arc One