by Kit Hallows
I took a deep breath to soothe my frayed nerves. The heavy sense of threat dimmed a little, but it was still there, and I was alone, devoid of magic and weapons, save for my sword. Was Emeric still here? Was that why my intuition buzzed like a swarm of angry bees?
Footsteps rang out behind me and I whirled around to face Astrid and Samuel returning, three silvery fish hanging from a braided vine in Samuel’s hand. His smile faded fast. “What’s up?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. This place is… something happened here.”
“Do we need to camp somewhere else?” Astrid asked as she added wood to the fire I’d started.
“Too late for that,” Samuel said. “We don’t want to be roaming around in darkness, not here.”
“Agreed,” I said. But it wasn’t the idea of wandering the forest that troubled me. The place had called to me, just as it had called my other. What bothered me was not knowing why.
Soon the fire crackled and blazed, throwing shadows across our camp. Samuel handed out chunks of smoky roast fish, but I barely touched it. It was good, fresh, meaty and flavorsome, but my appetite was gone. He told a couple of stories and Astrid produced a flask of gin. I took a long swig, managing not to wince too much as it scorched my throat and, while it lightened my head, it did little to lighten my mood.
“I’m going to turn in,” I said, and wished them a good night, before covering myself with a horse blanket. The night was bitterly cold, but I was determined to put the discomfort from my mind as I sought to find sleep. And eventually I did.
My dreams that night were something beyond nightmares. They came heavy as iron and were wrapped in black shrouds. I was pursued by faceless creatures that scampered and crept behind me, and vanished every time I turned, taunting me in some horribly macabre children’s game.
In the others, I was paralyzed, just as I’d been in the monastery, as three cowled figures gathered at the clearing’s edge. They observed us as we slept in our camp and my astral self, floating above, watched helplessly as the figures shifted positions, and slowly drew closer.
Soon they stood over us, ritual daggers in hand and their softly glowing eyes fixed on our throats. The one hunched over Samuel reached down and swiped its blade in a precise slash. Blood sprayed from Samuel’s neck and his eyes opened wide. He didn’t, couldn’t move, just as I couldn’t.
Slowly, the life left his gaze and his flesh turned pale in contrast to the band of blood that adorned his throat like a scarlet noose.
When the figure standing over Astrid leaned down, I screamed. No sound escaped my astral lips, but it seemed she’d heard the cry because her eyes snapped open and she stared in terror as the knife descended.
“Don’t you fucking-” my ghostly words vanished almost before I’d uttered them and I could only watch as the cowled figure murdered her and turned toward me with a smile.
As the final figure leaned over my slumbering body, a burst of white light shone over the clearing, illuminating the murderers’ faces.
They all had the same face – my own.
I sat bolt upright, my breath snagged in my lungs. Astrid was curled up comfortably beside me while Samuel snored and muttered in his sleep. They were alive, and our murders a nightmare. I climbed to my feet and was about to head into the trees to relieve myself when I stopped.
A tall, silhouetted figure stood at the edge of the clearing and while I couldn’t see its face, I knew it was watching me.
I stooped for my sword and was about to call a warning, but as I straightened, the figure was gone, as if it had never been there.
50
I woke again at dawn, feeling slow and groggy, as if I’d downed a raft of beers. Only I hadn’t, and I was fairly sure my sore head and sorer spirit was due to the eerily realistic nightmares.
Samuel woke next and glanced my way, confused, like he’d lost something. Then Astrid sat up looking equally befuddled. I told them about my nightmares and the figure I’d seen watching when I’d woken in the night, of how it had vanished like a phantasm, but had seemed more than that. It turned out I hadn’t been alone in that vision, because they’d seen it too.
“Do you think it was Emeric?” Astrid asked.
I shook my head. “No. I don’t know… maybe it was an aspect of him, but if he’d actually been here while we were sleeping, we wouldn’t be talking now.”
“True,” Samuel rose to his feet and grabbed his bow. “I’ll go hunt down some breakfast, and I’ll be sure to call out if I see any mysterious phantasms. Something like, agghh!” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
“I’ll scout for mushrooms,” Astrid said. “Coming?” she asked me.
“I’d better look after the horses.” Which was true, but it wasn’t my only motive to stay in the camp.
I waited for them to leave and wandered across the clearing, scouring the ground for something I knew I’d find. There, a white shard in the spongy undergrowth. I stooped down, pulled it out of the ground and held it up in the dawn light. It was a fragment of bone, and I knew there would be others. I walked on, searching the undergrowth until I found the loose pile of bones. Most were gnawed and worn, their shapes indecipherable, while others were clearly fragments of skulls, their hollowed sockets caked with green moss.
Nausea flashed through me in a wave and I knew, with no uncertainty, exactly where I was. This was the place where my family had hid from the king’s soldiers. The place where things had violently unfolded, just as Hellwyn had told me, in what seemed like a different lifetime.
The sight of the bones brought a psychic rush and a stream of bile burnt my throat. I glanced to the hollow mossy rotted logs laying in clusters at the edges of the clearing, and the structure they’d once been part of reformed in my mind’s eye. A memory returned, of myself as a child, running past the very spot I was standing in, crying like a babe.
I’d upset my father again, which was never difficult. There’d been a dead crow, part of the slow, drawn out dull ritual he had made me partake in, from midnight until the first light of dawn. At the conclusion, the bird’s eyes had opened, filmy and blue and the squawk it had made had been a splinter in my heart. I’d fled, my father’s furious curses chasing me from our ramshackle house.
On and on I’d ran, only stopping once I reached the brook; my secret place. I’d sat there, hugging my chest, babbling to myself, talking to my other. Me.
We’d spoken for hours, plotting and planning our escape, just as we always did, but we’d both known it would come to nothing. Or so I’d thought.
Our words flew back and forth and my other had grown more and more frenzied as he spoke of our father’s savagery toward us and our mother. Poor mother… so slight and frightened, but always loyal.
We’d slowly diverged, Emeric and I, until we’d become two aspects of the same terrified, furious soul. We’d talked together, letting out our angst, until the wind rattled the branches and the sky had dimmed and we’d sensed our father striding through the forest searching for us. Then we’d merged once more, and I’d retired to the shadows of Emeric’s consciousness, as his watchful hidden friend.
Morgan.
My other’s voice shattered the memories like a rock striking a mirror. I glanced around… he wasn’t there, but I felt his presence, just like the trees felt the stirrings of the shifting wind.
Slowly, my gaze fell to the pile of bones and the single skull nestled in the hollow of the tree behind them. I followed the tug inside me and stood before it.
It was my mother.
A twinge of pain passed through me.
Hold it.
Before I could stop myself, I reached down and as my fingers brushed the smooth round bone a flash passed through me, almost throwing my spirit from my body. And then I saw it; my past in all its ragged, black glory.
I was a child again, lying on the rough bed in the tiny dwelling we’d taken shelter in. Father had gathered supplies in Oastwater, a village not far away, and I’d eaten we
ll. The villagers were fast under his spell and terrified of him, with just cause. One had been determined to reveal our hiding place to the king’s men but before he had, he’d drowned himself in the mill pond outside the village. After that, no one in Oastwater spoke of us, and they served my father without question. We became their dark little secret, hidden among the trees, but never forgotten.
I’d been on the verge of falling back to sleep, when whatever had woken me stirred again. Something was in the forest, something that had seemingly gotten past all of father’s traps.
I turned to my mother and tried to rouse her; she’d know what to do. Father would too but I knew better than to wake him.
The air rustled with snores. There’d been a big ritual that night, they’d drunk lots of wine and everyone had laughed, for a while at least. I always enjoyed those moments, the ones before the old darkness raged like a storm over my father’s face. The anger always crept in as he spoke of the king and queen, and the destruction he was going to rain upon them. And it always went that way when he drank.
As the sound came again, I pulled mother’s eyes open with my fingers, but she was fast asleep. I stood over my father, and for a terrible moment felt the urge to find a rock and smash his head in. To free my mother of his iron grip and run with her to a place of warmth and light where his darkness couldn’t follow.
Shadows flashed along the wall as I scurried to the window and looked out. Silver men and women were in the clearing where father’s alchemists, Berthwn and Riddul slept by the fire. Then, as they drew closer, I saw they were knights and knew, with a sick, terrible certainty, what was to follow.
“Mother!” I shook her, and her eyes flitted open, but she didn’t see me. She was somewhere else. They’d been poisoned, the wine from the village, it had had something in it that shouldn’t have been there.
Someone cried out and I ran back to the window just as a woman with pitch-black hair held Berthwn in her armored arm, as if cradling a baby, and then she brought her sword down hard against her throat. The blood that fell to the mossy earth was the same shade of red as the wine in the cup beside my father’s bed.
Another knight appeared; I remembered him from the palace. Tom, with his long white hair. He cut Riddul’s throat, fast and quick and there was no pleasure in his eyes, only guilt.
Anger and fear muddled my mind, I tried to summon a spell that would stop the massacre, but my thoughts were as fleeting as a startled deer. Father had warned me about losing focus… he’d rapped my knuckles until they were bent and bruised. “Help!” I cried, hoping the other boy would appear, the one who’d come when I was scared. “Please!”
The door swung open and Tom looked from me to my mother and father. “Come with me lad,” he said, as if he were still a good person, a friend.
“No!” I turned my fear into power. “No!” Tiny black flames danced across my palm and I used the magic father had taught to make them brighter and stronger.
“Sorry, boy,” Tom said as he cuffed me across the face. My cheek blazed and the fire in my hands died as I fell. My head hit something hard, and it took a moment for the pain to follow. Then there was nothing but blackness and the hideous sounds of my parent’s gasping chokes.
I woke, bundled in Tom’s silvery arms. The knights argued and one named Prentice demanded I be killed just as my parents and the rest of their followers had, but no one volunteered. Not after Tom had promised that the first to come anywhere near me would lose their life. I’d lain in his arms, pretending to sleep as I’d watched through half lidded eyes.
Something glinted, breaking my trance and bringing me back to my present. I recoiled as I saw bright spectral green eyes gleaming in my mother’s skull. They weren’t hers, they were my father’s.
You saw, his gaze said, and now you understand.
I stared down, and nodded. I’d seen what Tom and Hellwyn had done. I’d seen the cowardice of their actions in all its brutality. My parents and their followers had been drugged, just as I’d once tried to poison Elsbeth Wyght, and in doing so, killed the woman I’d loved.
Stroud’s eyes faded into the dark hollows of my mother’s skull, but I heard his whisper. I set the skull down and followed his voice to a short severed branch that had been hammered into the ground. Its tip had been whittled to a sharp point, and symbols marked the soil around it.
End the cycle. End the pain.
I stepped toward the branch. It would be over in seconds; all the agony and suffering… I shook my head and tried to move away but the power inscribed in the earth, along with the memories, overwhelmed me with the compulsion to bring the long line of terrible, tragic events to an end.
51
Something stirred at the edge of my vision and I turned to find my other, Emeric, watching from his dead man’s eyes. He wasn’t there, not fully, he was like a ghost or the trace of a memory left behind, but I could clearly see the scorn and fury on his scarred face.
I held his stare as the hex he’d planted in the earth worked its dark magic. A distant part of me tried to fight back, to pull myself from the circle of sigils, but they had me in their grasp like a snake with a paralyzed mouse.
Emeric’s lips moved, and his words rang through my mind as clear as a bell.
End yourself… you’re empty, a charlatan. An imaginary friend summoned in a pang of weakness… you have no magic because you have no soul… end your stolen existence… sleep the good sleep…
Again, some distant, nagging voice tried to shake me, but I let it go. He was right, it was time, and had been for longer than I’d dared to admit to myself.
It was time to stop struggling as a phantom. As a half man.
My arms dropped to my side as I turned my back on the stake.
All I had to do was fall. Fall once, and I’d never stumble, never feel pain or loss again. Never feel like an aberration, a parasite as my father had called me.
I closed my eyes and prepared to let go. I was calm, serene. The struggle was almost over, and with it the endless fights and wars.
The end was here and I felt nothing but absolute peace.
“Morgan!” Astrid’s voice roused me from the spell. I opened my languid eyes as I heard footsteps scrambling to my side.
Do it! Fall!
I leaned back and let go...
... hands seized me and yanked me to my feet before shoving me onto the mossy earth. Samuel stood over me, rage and horror burning in his eyes.
The spell was broken, the voice in my mind gone. I glanced up as Astrid kicked her boots through the dirt, scuffing the earth and destroying the sigils. Samuel whispered words of power and pointed to the stake; it burst with raging blue witch fire and blackened as it shriveled and curled.
“Are you okay?” Astrid asked, as she crouched beside me.
“Yeah,” I felt vulnerable sitting on the ground, foolish. I climbed to my feet. “They laid a trap for me. It almost worked.” I told them of the visions I’d lived, of Tom and Hellwyn slaughtering my family.
“They died here?” Samuel glanced around. “That explains the nightmares we had last night. The watchers. This place is cursed.”
“Yeah,” I said, “ and I just viewed it all in technicolor, each and every last detail.” I still felt sickened by what I’d seen, of watching my parents drugged and murdered. Of Tom and the others, and what they’d done. “It was a cowardly, hideous attack. An atrocity.”
“It was,” Astrid agreed, “but they were following orders and do not forget how many died at your father’s hands before that. And how many have died since? Did you see that as well?” She grabbed my wrist and closed her eyes. The scenes flashed through my mind once more as she tracked them; the midnight slaughter, the moment Emeric had implored me to end myself. “A half man…” Astrid shook her head, and her jaw tightened. “And you believe it?”
“I guess I do,” I said, “in part at least.” The extraction of my other, as well as the dark magic had taken its toll. I was tired. So very tired.<
br />
“Who destroyed Wyght and her evil coven?” Astrid demanded. She was furious. “Who closed the doors they were opening in their attempt to destroy the blinkered world? Who stopped Endersley and his heinous disease?”
“We did,” I said. But her words had hit just where they were supposed to, and I became sickened by the inertia and darkness that had been slowly and steadily drowning me since we’d left the tower.
“Yes,” Samuel agreed, “we did. Together. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
I nodded. It was true. I’d done alright for a half man, but the job wasn’t finished. The realization hit me like a bucket of iced water and shook away the paralysis that had had its claws in me. “Come on,” I headed back to our camp in the clearing where we roasted one of the rabbits Samuel had caught, along with Astrid’s mushrooms. It was delicious, and made far better by the company. I still bore the hollow emptiness and exhaustion, but I wasn’t alone and it was plain to me that Astrid and Samuel were just as spent as I was, but they weren’t letting it stop them. It was just the kick in the ass I needed to send the shadows skittering away.
“Where next?” Samuel asked, as we packed.
“We follow Emeric.” I said, “Sadly for him, I still know where he is. And where he is, my father will be. We’ll end the pair of them before the day’s out.”
We traveled back through the trees, stopping only when we found a wide dirt road. I jumped down from the horse and placed my hand upon the earth. There; another tug from my other. West again, the way the trails of the restless had gone. We followed the path for a few more miles, then stopped once more so I could check for Emeric again.
Nothing.
“Something wrong?” Samuel asked.
I ignored him as I focused harder, digging deep within myself for the magnetic tug that marked my other. I shook my head. “It’s gone. I can’t feel him anymore. It’s like-”