Veli stands a few feet away, his back to me. I spare a moment to check on Uril. He is still in the same place, as rooted to the ground as the trees, but upon sensing my attention, looks reluctantly away and meets my gaze. Then he looks beyond me, toward Veli, and his face changes, goes slack. It is not an expression I have ever seen before, and it fills me with foreign dread.
I follow his gaze back to Veli, who is where I left him, but now the boy’s body is quaking so violently it’s as if he’s being manhandled by a ghost. He is close enough for me to grab him if I’m willing to move, but for the moment I can’t, and it is not quite fear that holds me in thrall, but awe. Awe at the thing I have mistaken as the movement of dead branches through the fog. It is nothing so benign, and for all I have seen in my time in this world, I am aware that I am bearing witness now to something that will change me from this moment forth.
It is taller than any of the Restless we have seen thus far. Taller than three men, and no part of it is thicker than my wrist. It looks for all the world like an effigy made animate, a crude idol of rope and bone. A gathering of sticks. And as it ducks low and pulls itself through the narrow gap between the boles of dead trees, it appears as if the woods itself has given birth to it. The fog whirls away at its approach, allowing me the full view of the horror it represents here in this dreadful place. Nothing about it suggests anything human, but there are features twisted and buried beneath its bark-like skin, a mottled face, as if a man died and was subsumed by a withering tree, granting it some form of perverse life, threading its veins with sap. Its chest heaves as it draws itself back up to full height and now that it has shredded the fog that obscured it from view, I can see that in its right hand hangs the limp body of Veli’s friend, Tarek. The head and one arm are missing, the stumps squirting blood down onto the blackened earth, slaking its thirst. The creature’s jaw moves languidly as he chews on the boy’s remains.
Perhaps to compensate for his embarrassment, to prove his worth and impress, Tarek decided to seek out the source of a noise, and in so doing, sealed his fate.
I look down at my hand, at the blade. It may as well be a feather for all the good it will do. I dare cast another glance at Urik. He is frozen by fear, as he should be. Bravery has found an inhospitable home here. If we fight, we will die. If we run, it will follow, but of these two choices, only the latter makes sense. It is not my time. Not yet. I will know it when it comes, but it does not come today, not at the hands of this godless devil of sticks and bone and rope and blue fire in place of eyes.
“Urik,” I hiss, and hear a creaking sound as the creature ceases its masticating and turns in my direction. I watch it cock its triangular head toward my voice. Blind. Despite the twin blue orbs of fire, the thing has no eyes. Urik brings his wide gaze to bear on me.
I tilt my head toward the trees at our back. “We run.” He nods once and some of the life, if not the color, returns to his face. Sometimes the mere thought of action can draw a man out of himself and away from certain death.
“The boy,” he whispers. “Don’t let the Witherer take him.”
He has just christened this creature. Henceforth, this is how it shall be known. Not some nameless thing, as it deserves to remain, but The Witherer, a name that will instill fear in all who hear it, for it, like so many of this creature’s ilk, portends a quick yet painful end, an abomination that has no right to be here and now has dominion. Its presence confirms that we do not know what roams the territory beyond our walls, that we have been arrogant in thinking our enemy familiar. The terrible truth is that we know less than we did before.
The world has gone mad.
In two quick steps I have the boy by the scruff of the neck.
“No!” he screams, mistaking me in his fright for another devil of the woods.
And that is all it takes for the Witherer to find us.
The sound of it lunging toward us is the sound of all the kindling in the woods breaking at once, and I do not wait to feel the twigs of its fingers on my body. I am gone, running, dragging the young one flailing along with me through the fog. I have no idea where I am going, only that behind us is death so I must keep pushing ahead. More than once my progress is halted by trees, the pain of the collision setting stars alight in my eyes, in my bones, but I persevere, Urik a bulky shadow to my left, keeping the pace. The brush crashes down behind us, trunks are pulverized, groan and fall. The Witherer comes, stalking us through the same woods where I became a warrior before burning them down just as this creature would burn me down, and perhaps I deserve it after all. Perhaps this thing is not Restless. Perhaps it has been resting all along and the woods have resurrected it to make me pay for my desecration of this sacred place.
Perhaps it is an end I deserve. And in that moment, I think not of my brother, of my brethren, of anything but moving forward and away from that hellish demon that would strip me of my skin. I am not afraid to die.
I am afraid to die and become Restless.
Veli’s foot finds a root and he is yanked from my grasp as surely as if the Witherer snatched him away. I slow but do not stop, glance back at the dazed boy struggling to his feet, and I think of going back for him, think of being brave, of trying to save him. But then instinct takes over and I know that if I do not stop, do not go back, the boy will be killed, and the killing and the feeding will slow the creature down. The boy will die; we will live. I do not enjoy making this decision. There is no nobility in it, only self-preservation. But the choice is made, and I run and close my eyes as the crashing sounds behind me abruptly cease and the boy’s scream shatters the brief silence until it too is made silent.
Urik is still with me, a shadow in the fog, and I wonder what he will say, what he will think, and then realize I don’t care. He will thank me for his life, as I thank Veli for mine. Should we live to recount this tale, there will be no mention of the forced sacrifice, of my abandonment of the child. These are not details that will matter to anyone but the parents, and even their grief will be muted by the fear of what we have encountered in the dead woods today.
We run for an hour, until we are certain the only sounds we can hear are those of our own passage, the thunder in our chests and ears and throats, and still we do not stop.
Only when the fog is gone and the light returned to the day do we rest, in what appears at first glance as a clearing. What it resolves to be upon closer inspection is, in some ways, worse than the thing behind us.
Urik looks at me. “We should go home.”
I agree, but not yet, partly out of curiosity, mostly because I know he is trying to protect me from what I might see.
We have reached not a clearing, but a garden, ringed so perfectly by the trees it looks as though it was designed by man and not nature. But though this is undoubtedly the garden of which my brother spoke, nothing grows here... though plenty has been planted.
“We should go,” Urik says again, his impatience marked by renewed terror at the new atrocity laid out before us.
It is a garden of hands, of arms buried in soil. Dozens of them, each one reaching into the air like some strange kind of fleshy plant. Each one sprouts from the elbow, and though there is nothing to suggest that these limbs have not been severed from their owners, I know this is not true. I know there are bodies beneath the blackened earth.
“Why?” Urik asks. “Why would someone do this?”
I can only shake my head. It is not a question that is likely to ever be answered, and in truth I care less about the genesis of this terrible display than I care about finding out who populates it. And after a half-hearted attempt to dissuade me Urik turns back to guard our backs, his eyes set on the fog as it recedes like a sheet pulled away from a corpse. For now, the woods appear empty back there. If we are fortunate, the Witherer has retreated to feed on the bounty it took from us.
I walk among the hands, out for a stroll in a garden of Hell. Whomever interred these poor creatures did not distinguish by race. There are humans here,
and dwarves, even an elf. It looks like a mockery of the dead woods around us, all those hands twisted into claws, grabbing at the air in desperation as they died, suffocating, their lungs filled with dirt.
It does not take me long to find what I’m looking for, and as if he has been waiting for it, as if this was the real reason he didn’t want me among the arms, Urik turns to look at me, his face grim.
The arm reaching from the dirt before me has an inked symbol of a wolf on its blanched white wrist, courtesy of the street people who offer such things in trade. Such practices are common, but the street people pride themselves on never repeating a design.
And this one belongs to Nderin, Urik’s son.
At the look in my eyes, he nods his acceptance of the news and trudges through the dirt to where I stand. I put a hand on his shoulder and leave him to his mourning, though I suspect it will be quiet and not long. Urik has never had much love for his son. If anything, he has seen him as a disappointment, which I have often suspected is simply us looking at our kin as mirrors, but like me, loyalty has brought us here to retrieve them, alive or dead.
I search the remaining graves, if such a name can be employed for this wickedness, and although my brother is not marked, I will recognize his stubby fingers.
But he is not here.
Urik jolts and takes a step back just as I am sitting down to smoke upon a moss-shrouded rock. Pipe to my mouth, match held aloft, I look and forget the fire until it burns my fingers.
The hand next to Ndemir’s has moved. Then his son’s hand moves.
Then they all do.
“Olta...” Urik shakes his head. “Could they be...?”
I shake my head. We have been here too long, and while my kind are known to be able to survive longer in situations in which others would suffocate, even we dwarves couldn’t manage such a prolonged internment. Before the Witherer, we might have fooled ourselves into hoping that there’s still a chance for Ndemir. Now it can only be more witchery, another display of the wicked magic that permeates this place. And we should not be here. Every moment brings us closer to our own destruction, a reality that is hardly limited by this place, but seems represented by it.
Urik starts to bend down to grab his son’s hand. In a flash I am by his side, my hand clamped on his wrist. “No,” I tell him. “Not unless you want to join him.”
And as if they have heard, the hands grow still, underwater flowers in the absence of a current.
“Home,” I say, and though it takes us an eternity, at last we move, not back the way we have come, but to the west, the long way around. We are willing to endure the protracted journey if it means we are free of this hellish place.
Urik the Butcher, Urik the Quiet, says nothing on the long walk home. He simply surveys the landscape and absently massages his wrist.
✽✽✽
Some unknown time later, the walls of Elldimek hove into view, misted by distance. From here I can see the black specks of the crows. They are not circling but roosting on the walls. Watchers.
My feet ache, and my heart aches, too. I want to rest, but so close to home and unsure of what further surprises the Outside might have in store for us, I walk on. Urik trails behind. His is not a mask of sorrow, but anger, for though he might have little feeling left for Ndemir in his deadened soul, still he feels the theft of one of our own at the hands of these ungodly creatures. With it comes the awareness that this will never end, that we are the hunted now and one day the sun will rise on a world that is empty of natural life. Our kingdom, already stolen once, will be owned for good by demons, and we will be no more.
And perhaps that is how it should be, for what use are we to this world as slaves? Even those who would own us are themselves owned by the monsters that exist beyond the walls.
“Olta,” Urik says, breathless. “Stop.”
I do as he asks. He is bent double, bile unspooling from his mouth in a long silvery thread. I wait, watching him carefully as the foul breeze blows around us and the crows watch quietly. I consider this giant of a man, a man that in the old days fought proudly alongside me, a man I would have called a friend. Today, we are strangers. I have no money to buy his meat, and the Foresters don’t provide enough to keep him in business, which renders him a butcher in name only. I no longer trust this man.
“Do you wish to share something with me before we reach the gate, Urik?”
He takes his time gathering his breath, clearing his lungs, and then he straightens, allowing me to see the blade in his hand. It is held downward, unthreateningly, but this offers little comfort, not given my suspicion of him, confirmation of which I have awaited since I first awoke to find him in my quarters.
There is nothing to read on his face.
“Why did you really bring me out here? Was it the Nightcoats?” I ask him.
He says nothing, betrays even less.
“Why?”
Still he is silent, but that is condemnation enough. “What benefit in killing me and my brother?”
He shakes his head, only slightly, but without words I cannot decide if he is denying my words or simply can’t explain the motives behind his assignment.
“Are they simply weeding out the weak so their resistance will be stronger when the time comes?”
“Olta...”
“And what of your boy? Was that your test? Did they require a sacrifice before they could trust you? You didn’t look upset enough to have found him in that garden.”
“I don’t—”
“Is that because you put them there? Was it you who buried all those people in the woods? Is it some kind of ritualistic burial ground? Help me to understand. Did you bring me there to kill me? Did you kill Admir, too? Where is he?”
He shakes his head again and now there is pain on his face. “It’s not like that.”
I step closer to him and his knife hand twitches. The crows rejoice. “Then what is it like? Why didn’t you kill me in the woods?”
“Olta.”
I wait, but there are no more words coming. Perhaps that is why he doesn’t speak, because it is impossible for most people to speak without deception. A mute man can never be called a liar. But it also deprives us of the truth if there is a truth to be had.
“Were you planning to cut my throat before we were in full view of the gate? Or did you just intend to cripple me so that the Restless would take me and you would appear innocent of your crimes? Tell me, Urik, why have you turned on us, on your brothers? What have we done to you?”
His brow furrows. “Olta, I didn’t—”
A shuffling sound behind him and he turns, knife raised. I close the distance between us and slip my own blade into his throat and twist, tug it upward and withdraw. Then I step away as Urik’s head comes back around, his eyes like boiled eggs. He reaches for me, his hand clutching like that of his own murdered son in the garden. He chokes, sputters blood, winces, and then drops to his knees.
I watch him wheezing at my feet, blood spurting from the gash in his neck, and then I raise my eyes to the figure standing still and watching a few feet away from where he stood.
In truth, I do not know whether Urik betrayed me. It is possible, as all things are these days. The Nightcoats are gaining in strength. They whisper, build their existence atop a castle of secrets. That they have plans for Elldimek is not one of those secrets, only what the nature of those plans may be. They are cunning, ruthless, dangerous. And despite living within the confines of a stone prison, they yet make people disappear. I may never know if Urik was their emissary, or if I and my brother were truly targets. It is just as likely that I thirst for blood, that my discontent with the shadow my life has become has led me to take blood where I can find it, even if that means my own kind, even if I must falsely vilify them. In fighting the creature, in breathing this air, in seeing the woods, I recalled more than ever what it felt like to be a warrior. It is all I was ever meant to be, and without it I am a ghost... worthless, purposeless, a waste. As my fathe
r once said, “In the absence of other prey, a wolf will eat his own.”
It pleases me to think myself a wolf.
Before me is the cub, my brother, weaving before me, exhausted, changed, covered in filth. His face is made of chalk, his mouth hanging slack.
“Olta? Oh, brother, thank God it’s you.”
As I near him, teeth clenched and blade at the ready, I see the blue fire in his eyes.
I am mad. I am whole.
I am a warrior.
SANCTUARY
“GO GET YOUR FATHER,” MOTHER SAID, and the spoon froze a half-inch from Liam’s milk-sodden lips. His gaze moved from the daydream he’d been projecting upon the wall above the scarred kitchen table, to his left, where his mother was laboring over the stove. The bacon and eggs were burning. He could smell them as they hissed and popped. His mother, almost skeletally thin beneath her threadbare robe, stabbed at them as a blue plume of smoke rose around her, or maybe from her. It was hard to say. It was, after all, Sunday morning, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her be anything but angry on a Sunday.
Between his mother and the table stood an empty chair, where on any other morning, his father would have been sitting, face buried in a newspaper and communicating in mumbles. But as the sacristan, Father was required to go to church on Sunday, both services. Afterward, he celebrated spirits of a different kind.
With difficulty, Liam swallowed his cereal and lowered the spoon. His mother’s request made him feel sick. He didn’t want to get dressed, didn’t want to walk through the snow down the narrow crumbling street. Lately it had begun to feel like a throat eager to ingest him. And most of all, he didn’t want to go to McMahon’s, the corner bar where he knew he’d find his father. He just wanted to finish his breakfast and go back upstairs to his room, to his sanctuary, where he spent most of his time reading and writing and drawing. It was safe there, surrounded by the portraits he had drawn to keep him company, portraits he wished were real so that they could take the place of the real world. Down here where the adults existed, there was nothing but raised voices and hurt feelings, infrequently punctuated by unexpected bursts of violence from which even he was not immune. Like the smell of those burning eggs, he felt the sourness and uncertainty of the world outside his room trying to attach itself to him like a second skin, trying to induct him into the same misery that had assimilated his parents.
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