by Greg Curtis
“Oh and the poison, it’s witchbane. A soul poison. The pain you feel now is only the start. Your bones burn now during this first day and that will only get worse. At night your blood will catch fire as well. Tomorrow or maybe the next day, you will start bleeding from the eyes and soon after you will go blind. Darkness will be your world. From then on, three or four days perhaps, you will be delivered screaming to the underworld. Though it will seem like an eternity before you finally arrive.”
There was silence for a while after that, as the brigand took in what he was saying. But then to his surprise the big man started laughing. Not a merry sound though. A bitter laugh filled with pain and hatred. A laugh dredged up from the bowels of the underworld. And a laugh that spoke of recrimination and damnation. For both of them.
“So boy, you’ve finally found an enemy to strike at. Good for you.” He laughed some more and something in Finell’s intestines started squirming. He knew something bad was coming, and he couldn’t stop it. He couldn’t stop him speaking without killing him and he couldn’t kill him, not yet. Not before he’d suffered everything a man could know.
“But what about all those others? All the innocent blood on your hands? Humans, elves. So many dead because of you. Oh Y’aris may have pushed and pulled you. He may have played you like a puppet as he brought about his war. But in the end it was you who gave the order.”
“Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? More? So many dead. So many mothers who won’t have their children return home. So many wives whose husbands will never step through that front door again. So many other innocents that your soldiers killed in your name. Children and babies too if what the bards say is true. And all of it because of you.” It was Finell’s turn to cry out, and he screamed with fury as the big man laughed at him. And he wasn’t finished.
“You blamed the humans for the crime of your own advisor. You launched a war against them when they had done nothing. What else did you do simply because your troll skin adviser told you too?”
“No!” Finell screamed his denial at him with all his strength, but only because he knew it was true. He had done those things. And out of the mouth of his most hated enemy, a creature so foul that he should never have drawn breath, was being spoken the truth. Worse than that, the very truth his own dear sister had spoken to him so many times.
“Yes.” The big man laughed as if it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard, and Finell shrivelled inside.
“I have only a few more hours or days of this, and then I will be in the blackest of underworlds. The demons will sup on my bones. So be it. I always knew they would.” There was nothing of fear or regret in his words. Only bile.
“But my crimes are small compared to yours. Tiny. And you young poxy prince, you will be joining me in the underworld. And when you arrive, after the demons have finished with us both, I will sup on your bones in turn. I have only a few days to wait. But you have a lifetime. A lifetime of fear ahead as you know that I will be waiting for you, and that there is nothing you can do. Your precious Mother will not save you. The nine Divines have washed their hands of you already. There can be no forgiveness for you. And the demons of the nine hells rub their hands with glee as they wait for you. You will live in fear, and die in fear, and dwell in the pits for eternity as my prey.”
Even knowing he was dying in agony the big man could find something to taunt him with. Something in him to laugh at. And it wasn’t right. Except that he knew it was.
“Stop it!” He screamed at the big man, an almost wordless shriek of pain and rage. But it didn’t stop him. If anything he laughed even louder, somehow even finding the strength to raise his hand and point at him as he laughed.
“Shut up!” This time even he couldn’t understand what he screamed. But it was everything he had. Every bit of anger and rage he had, every morsel of grief and pain, every scrap of hatred. And the man just kept laughing. Laughing and pointing. And even taunting him.
“You know you killed her.”
“No!” Surely Finell’s scream could have been heard by the stars above it was so loud. And it still wasn’t loud enough.
“Yes. You were the one that gave that little rat the position. You gave him the chance to strike her down. Wherever her soul is she hates you.”
“No!” Finell just kept shrieking, his denial, trying to make the words stop, but they wouldn’t. He just kept laughing.
“Yes! You know she hates you.”
“No!”
“Yes! She knows all now. She knows your evil. That you were a shame to the family. That you should never have been born.”
Something within Finell broke then. Turned to dust before the brigand’s laughter, and before he knew it the knife was in his hands again, covered in yet more blood. This time he was crouched right over the man, and he had another hole in him, a wound in his shoulder, so near to his throat. And the man wouldn’t stop laughing, as if it was the funniest thing in the world.
Finell stabbed him again, screaming with fury, sinking the blade deep into the man’s chest, desperate to stop the laughter. But it wouldn’t stop. The man just kept laughing at him, and telling him all the most terrible secrets he’d never wanted to hear.
So he stabbed him again, and again, and again. Over and over he plunged the knife deep into his chest, feeling it sink in, watching the blood spray in all directions, and still not stopping the laughter. It just wouldn’t end. Desperate he kept stabbing, screaming his rage, and stabbing with all his might until finally he simply couldn’t any more. His arms were so tired that they couldn’t lift the knife any more. His lungs simply couldn’t find enough air to breath. And his throat was completely raw from screaming.
It was only then that he could look down on the face of his enemy and see what he’d done.
The man was dead. More than dead. He was completely destroyed. His face was gone, all that remained of it a gory wet mass of bleeding flesh. His neck had been almost completely severed. Only a few flaps of skin held the remains of his head to his body. And as for the rest it looked like something that wild dogs would leave after they had finished eating. There was blood and flesh and bone, all mixed up with the torn scraps of his clothing, almost scattered by the ferocity of his strikes. And there was blood everywhere. So much blood.
It drenched what had been the remains of the man. It flowed in pools through his bedroll and on to the ground, and even ponded around his knees. It was scattered thick against the canvas of the tent, dripping down it like rain. It was covering Finell from head to foot. Soaking his clothes. It was in his mouth. He could smell it, taste it, almost gag on it.
The man was dead, and he wouldn’t stop laughing at him.
It was then that Finell understood the truth. That the man’s laughter was in him. In his soul. And that it would never stop. Because he was right. Finell knew that his soul was doomed. He hadn’t realised it until just then, but the dead man was right. Finell had been trying to deny the undeniable.
His laughter was a torment that would not end. His laughter would live in his soul until his dying breath, a poison without a cure. It might not end even then.
Even his one true victory had turned to ashes.
Broken, destroyed in a way that he could not even understand, Finell rose to his feet and silently left the tent. There was nothing more for him in it. Not any more.
Outside he heard the moans and cries of the other brigands in the still air, and he ignored them. There was nothing he could do for them either. Neither save them nor kill them. There was nothing more to be done at all he realised as he walked out into the forest.
Save one thing.
Finell was surely many leagues from the camp when he realised it, and he had no idea which direction he’d travelled. Night had fallen hours before. It was cold and he was covered in blood. The cries of distant dire wolves rent the air as they prowled the great forest. If they smelled the blood on him they would hunt him down. And he cared about none of that. He cared only that th
ere was still something he had to do. That he had a purpose. One single shining purpose.
There was still one more who had to die. Y’aris.
It was a thought to cling to as he walked. A goal to dream of. A purpose to live for. It was the only thing he had left. And even without his willing them to, his feet started taking him south. South to his betrayer. South to his end.
He only wished the laughter would stop as he travelled there. But he knew it wouldn’t.
Chapter Eighty Two.
He was cold, bitterly cold, and Terwyn pulled his cloak tight around him. Yet it was a sunny late summer day, the air was warm and in the distance he could see the heat haze over the fields. The blackened fields of Greenlands dotted with burnt out buildings. Much the same as the fields he’d set ablaze not that long ago. He shivered. The cold was inside him, and he knew it would never go away.
It wasn’t for their former comrades who had passed from the world during the night that he felt the chill. They had killed themselves, opening up their wrists with sharpened stones, all that they had available to them as they began their long march home. He shivered a little more, unable to help himself. But not for them. True, what they had done was dishonourable. True, they had condemned themselves to the underworld by their actions. And it was also true that they had been friends as well as comrades. But it still wasn’t for them that he shivered. If anything he envied them. Their pain, he hoped, was over. The rest of them just had to continue until their own end brought them mercy.
Of course the two who had died during their first night on the road back, had not been the first to die by their own hands. They would not be the last. Many more would take the same journey. They had weeks of marching left to them as they followed the wagons home, and he wondered how many of them would arrive in Leafshade. Facing their people was a torment no one wanted to face. Returning to their houses and families, to their loved ones, admitting their crimes. Just the thought tore holes in their hearts. But then every day was already the same.
He guessed that the others knew the same dark thoughts. After their weeks and months in the prison, weeks that should have been years, years that should have been ended with the pull of a lever and the snap of a neck, they should have been happy to be going home. But no one was happy. There was no joy in the world any more, and in his soul he knew that there never would be again. And that was as it should be.
Every day, every minute, every second, he saw those people he had killed in front of him. He saw their faces, he heard their cries, even in his sleep. And worst of all, he remembered the pleasure that had come with each terrible act. The old and the sick, women and children, the injured and the surrendering, slaughtered by his own hand. How could he have done that? How could anyone?
The elders had tried to explain, but there was no explanation. There could be none, and there should be none. They said it was a demon that had made them do these things. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. Not when it had been his own hands holding the weapons. Not when it had been his own mind telling him to, and his own soul laughing every step of the way. If there was a demon it was him.
And yet there was a darkness. He could feel it within him, clutching at him, trying to drag him down. A darkness of unutterable cold and hunger that had dwelled in his soul. Maybe it was only the memory of it that remained. Maybe the elders had truly cast it from him. But he could still feel it. He knew that somewhere within him it dwelled, waiting for him to slip back into its reach. That it dwelled within all of them.
That was why the others had truly killed themselves. The memories, the guilt and shame were terrible. But the constant, terrible fear that one day they would slip back into the demon’s clutches, that was unbearable torment.
“Please, does anyone know the names of the people we bury today?” The guard called out from the front where they were busy laying the last of the stones on to the make shift burial mound, wanting to have something to put on them. It was not the first time he had asked Terwyn realised, though he hadn’t really been paying him any attention. It was unimportant to him. Or it had been, until he suddenly understood the truth.
“No names.” He spoke up, answering the man, slightly surprised at how strange his voice sounded. How long had it been since he had last spoken? Days? Weeks? Longer? And why did he care? What did it matter if the man had a name for the dead? But it did somehow.
“What?” The guard came up to him, his face full of questions and doubt.
“We have no names.”
“But -.” The guard’s voice trailed off.
“We came from the soil, we return there, and no one should know us. No one should remember that we ever lived. It was a mistake that we were ever born. A crime.” Terwyn fell silent after that, his words spoken, and though the guard kept asking him to explain, he didn’t. He forgot about him in truth as his thoughts returned to their dark spiral, and eventually the man went away, surely more confused than he had been before he’d spoken.
In time, some one up front gave the order and the wagons began to move again, and they followed, bound as they were to them by their harness. And as they marched slowly past the two burial mounds, no one even looked at them. They were of no importance. Just two piles of rocks out in the middle of the burnt pastures. Two dead creatures slowly returning to the soil as they should.
In the end, that was all any of them were, and he looked forwards to the day when he would be one of them.
He pulled his cloak a little tighter against the chill of the late summer sun and let his feet carry him back to Elaris.
Chapter Eighty Three.
Iros was troubled. He had been for a long time, something that his people probably guessed, even though he tried to pretend the wisdom of Nanara and the serenity of Llia at all times. But what the messengers had been bringing to him of late was disturbing and he had no explanation for it, save that it was simply the continuation of evil.
First the war. An obscenity that should never have happened. An evil that had claimed so many innocent lives and very nearly destroyed his home. And something that still made no sense to him. An angry high lord was one thing, but an army of moon misted soldiers was something else. And if the elders were right, they were only the beginning of the Reaver’s evil. But still they had been beaten back.
Next had come the abominations. They still came. More of the demon’s soldiers. Crawling out of the great southern forests in their ones and twos ever since the war. But at least in those numbers they could be handled, even by the most badly damaged towns. It was simply a matter of maintaining a watch and having men ready with their weapons. But who was to say that they wouldn’t start coming in larger numbers? Or when?
During the war with the Reaver a millennia before, they had been described as a plague upon the land and their armies as hordes. Only a well-defended city could hold the tide back. And even coming as they were, they were a constant reminder that all was not as it should be. They were a harbinger of dark times ahead. And that after a terrible war that had left his land torn apart and his people brutalised.
But as if all of that hadn’t been enough, then the disappearances had started.
People continued to disappear even now that the war was ended. A lot of people. They were mostly from the smaller towns and villages, but there were also travellers and farmers and trappers. Those who lived a long way out of the towns. And always it was without any explanation. They hadn’t moved to other towns. They hadn’t said farewell to friends and neighbours. They’d simply not been there when others had asked after them.
At first it had been only a few. A man here, a family there. And save for the rate at which it kept happening, it hadn’t been too much of a worry. In the wake of the war it had actually seemed normal. But since then more people had started disappearing and the numbers were growing steadily. It was from more towns and cities. And it wasn’t just Greenlands. The problem was growing.
When so many of his people were disappearing without c
ause, that was troubling. When the same thing was being reported from so many of his towns it was more so. But when the same news was being reported from the other southern lands, it became something more disturbing. Something sinister. A pattern.
The other lords thought the same. In Preston and West Hold, Copper Hills and Torrington, the reports were gathering along with worried families. People were vanishing in such numbers from all the southern cities that patrols were being sent out hunting for them, while pigeons flew day and night with the names of the missing, hoping that they would be found elsewhere.
They hadn’t been found though.
The thought, at least officially, was that they were simply people who had lost their homes and their work, and who were seeking out new lives for themselves elsewhere. But in his very bones Iros knew it was more than that.