Then a foreign sound intruded upon his suffering, frightening in its power.
He shied away from it, attempting to hide in the darkness, but the song held onto him lovingly, a melodious scythe slicing through the dark. It would not let him escape. Amber mist formed and evaded the void, its tendrils soothing him. Warmth accompanied it, as calming and glorious as a sunrise chasing the night westward. It grabbed hold of his suffering and cradled him like a mother would. Through it all, the song intensified, pushing more earnestly. The interwoven notes undulated with power and conviction, pulling the gloom apart, the madness he had become withdrawing with each thread pulled from its black blanket.
The anxiety holding him prisoner withdrew. A heartbeat he had forgotten he possessed returned to a modicum of normalcy. The darkness lost its severity, and he resurfaced to memory. Arms returned to him, pinioned to his side. The fervent eyes faded from his nightmare, winking out like stars as the morn approaches. The buzzing disappeared. The fire of his innards was reduced to a dull throb. He shuddered in cooling sweat. Pulling a deep rediscovered breath in, he exhaled the aftertaste of ash, dirt, and death. The hatred diminished to mere pinpricks. Sadness remained, his persistent companion, untouched by the song’s power while unshackled tears flowed into a sea yearning to warmly embrace him.
The song left him alone then to a dreamless, undisturbed sleep.
* * * * *
Sorin Westfall awoke.
He broke the surface of his slumber, fighting against heavy chains that shackled his awareness. Harsh light stabbed through the slits of his eyelids and into his aching mind. He tried to shield his eyes and look at his surroundings, but his arms would not respond; they were tucked beneath a thick, woolen blanket pulled tightly over his body. Sorin tried to sit up, but he was too weak to do so.
His eyes adjusting to the adamant illumination, Sorin gazed around the room. It was bare and simple, nothing hanging on the walls. A single unlit candle sat on a small table next to his bed, its wax rivulets frozen. Large maple leaves hung from branches outside an open window, and sweet, cool air flowed over his cheeks. Birdsong twittered outside. The earthy aroma of cooking food wafted on the air through the doorway, inviting his hunger to grumble.
Where was he? And why was he here?
The horrific events flashed through his mind then. He remembered in a moment the destruction of his life, and the nightmares of his black sleep returned. The fire. The ruin of his home. The acidic malice in the creature’s milky-white eyes. The feeling of sharp claws within his body as blood spilled down his hot skin. The snapping sound of deadwood as his father’s strong hands saved him in one final act of strength and love.
The vacant stare of his mother’s eyes.
A weight settled upon his chest as though the memories were made of stone, and Sorin labored to breathe. His parents were dead. He had left them and doomed them to their fate alone. The once solid family presence in Sorin’s life was reduced to a memory, ripped from him, the loss of his mother and father already a giant hole in his heart. His parents had always been there with him, for him, their kindness, love, and strength guiding him. How he would be able to go on now made almost no difference. Tears made fresh trails down his cheeks, his grief given life.
“Crying honors no one, son,” a gruff voice said.
An old man stood in the doorway, dressed in muted browns and forest greens. Through his blurry vision, Sorin saw the man had a disheveled beard and white hair. Arms folded across his leather jerkin, the man stared at Sorin, the dark circles under his pale blue eyes deep and sunken. The sun-browned skin of his face was still smooth, but wrinkles like crows feet splayed at the corner of his eyes. He was slightly older than Sorin’s father but a more dank old age hung over him like a shadow.
It was the old man from the back of the church. He moved with deliberate ease and sat in a large wooden chair in the corner, his haunted eyes steady and unforgiving.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Sorin croaked, his throat sore and scratchy.
“You are in my home, in the wilds south of Thistledon,” he replied with a western province accent. “As for who I am—you may call me Thomas.”
Sorin fought his blankets, trying to win free. He needed answers and he was not going to talk to this stranger bedridden.
“Rest easy,” Thomas placated. “You are safe, and I doubt moving that much would be a good thing for the injuries you sustained.”
The ache in his shoulder flared brighter in response. Sorin relaxed. “How did I end up here?”
“I brought you here, or—more accurately—your horse carried you. I saw a giant plume of smoke in the distance and decided to investigate. When I arrived your home was mostly gone. You were laying face down several kingsyards away, hot with fever. After corralling your horse and bringing you to my home, I administered what woodland remedies I know to your injuries.” He tugged briefly at his beard. “You’ve been asleep two days, Sorin.”
Sorin frowned. “How do you know my name?”
Thomas smirked a flash of resentment. “I’m a recluse, boy, not an idiot.”
“I have to get home,” Sorin said, again struggling to free himself of his coverings. “I have to see it for myself.”
Thomas shook his head. “There is no need. I buried your mother where she lay, and there was nothing left of the house to worry about. The livestock fled. Your father inside was reduced to ash—what was left I buried with your mother. There is nothing left for you to go back to.”
“I have to see it for myself!”
“You will not,” Thomas said brusquely. Irritation pinched his face darkly. “You are recovering well, but there is always risk. The wounds you suffered were deep and brutally made. It took half my afternoon to clean and dress them. The fever has lessened but you are still weak. Another night’s rest is needed.” He looked more pointedly at Sorin. “Your parents are dead. Would you join them by being foolhardy?”
Sorin ignored him, looking away out the window. A part of him wanted to. He knew this old man spoke the truth, but life without his parents was nearly unbearable. Sorrow welled up within him anew, but he pushed it deep into the core of his being. He would not give up. The venom from the creature’s claws had acted quickly after he was stabbed, and its fire still lingered in his veins—but that realization stole nothing from his desire to see it all himself.
“Now, who else was there in the forge?” Thomas asked.
At Thomas’s question, images of the horrific ordeal hit Sorin like a sledgehammer to the gut. Realizing there was no point in hiding what he knew, Sorin told his rescuer what had transpired.
“Blind eyes that could see, you say?” Thomas questioned. Sorin nodded. Rising, Thomas freed Sorin from his bedding. “Come,” he said simply.
Untucked from his warm prison, Sorin pushed his legs out onto the floor. A brief wave of nausea and darkness clouded his vision before it faded. He was dressed in a simple white robe that reached the floor and was belted with a thin cord around his waist. His entire body hurt, but together Thomas and Sorin slowly walked into the adjoining room.
Sorin sat down on a small stool near the tiny flames of a brick hearth, shivering in spite of the warm summer weather. The home’s main room was organized; the wood floor was clean and lacked clutter, the walls were clear of hanging items, the table and chairs were well constructed but without decoration. In the corner near the fireplace, a worn narrow cot rested. An unadorned sword leaned against one wall, and above it hung a giant longbow with quiver. Three windows paned with glass revealed more forest and lit the home with sunshine.
Upon the hearth’s mantle, five books sat alone. Books were a luxury the farther from the West Sea province one got. Three of the books there were similar in size, coloring, and style, but the other two were tall and thick. A cursory look told the books had been made with great care. No titles graced either spine, but the leather was aged and oiled, with fine gilt stitching. One had the image of a five-cornered leaf stamped
into it; the other was black and devoid of decoration. For Thomas to have several books meant he had been someone of great wealth if he wasn’t still. Or, Sorin reflected, an excellent thief.
Thomas spooned something into an earthenware gray bowl from a small iron cauldron suspended above the hearth’s fire. “We’ll get to what you saw in a bit. Here.” He passed the food to Sorin. “To heal, one must eat.”
Within the bowl, a stew consisting of potato chunks, sliced carrots, and a dark cubed meat of some kind steamed into the air. Sorin’s stomach gurgled in anticipation, and he began to eat. It was warm and filling. Even with his tender throat, he quickly finished the meal.
“I’ve lived in this forest a long time and have seen all manner of animal attacks.” Thomas moved to sit across from Sorin on another stool. “Kodiak and crag cats are the worst, at least in this part of the world, and I’ve seen victims of both. From the wounds on your shoulder and in your side, coupled with that of the venom, I realized you were attacked by something different.
“After I dressed your wounds and left you to sleep, I returned to your home to complete the task of laying your parents’ remains to rest. Once done, I tracked around your home and found a set of fresh footprints not belonging to you or your parents.” He paused. “Claws made your wounds, but not claws from an animal.”
“You are right,” Sorin said. “It was human, but it was cloaked. I did not see the rest of it. Only that it looked ill, with white eyes like that of a blind man. And it smelled rotten, like week-old meat left out in the sun.” Emotions of anger and sorrow swirled inside Sorin. “Earlier in the day, while my family was going to church, I saw the creature with three others at the Broken Leg Inn.”
Thomas stood and retrieved the red-leathered book from the mantle. He carefully flipped to a specific page and handed the book to Sorin.
The book in his lap, Sorin began to read. It was the Codex—the Book of Lirine to be specific—and much of it discussed Aerom’s ascension to the Beyond and the events leading to the Feyr’s survival. Then a passage caught his attention:
“Jeryck, the final betrayer of Aerom, brought Aerom’s destruction to Isere. Isere, with hate filling her cackle and strong hands gripping her doom, drove the nail through Aerom’s hands with the hammer, pinioning the All Father’s son there to die.
There Aerom gave up his spirit to the Beyond and All Father. The winged beasts roared, the Ashnyll screamed and fled, and the Feyr were saved from treachery; but none were more wrathful than Evil, which saw its chance to escape thwarted at Aerom’s sacrifice.
The Witch wept insanity, her doom known the moment of Aerom’s final gasp. Jeryck fell to his knees beneath the bloodied oak tree and darkness gripped him in misty malice. His eyes became milk and stars, his soul bound to the world, the Beyond forsaken him.”
Sorin reread the passage and still he could not believe it. He looked up at Thomas and was unable to speak, the import of what he had read clutching his heart with a mailed fist.
“The jerich has many names,” Thomas said. “The literal translation in the Old Tongue is ‘from the dirt.’ To the Giants of Lockwood, the creature is Grymshade. It is sceadwe to the Feyr. In pagan sects that are strewn about the land, it is called seuthanan—the seether.” Thomas turned his eyes on the large book in Sorin’s lap. “To the Codex, however, it is simply written and known as the Gulgoleth, although over the centuries many use a corruption of the man’s real name to title him by.”
The jerich. The creature was mentioned briefly in several passages within the Codex. Jeryck was the man who had tied the wrists and ankles of Aemon the Fatherhead, had brought a hammer and nail for Isere the Witch to use, and had been cursed to live in misery forever for his transgression of hatred against the All Father’s son. Pastor Hadlin had used the creature as allegory to illustrate the power of the choices people make; parents used the story as a means to scare their young children into going to sleep at night. Was he supposed to believe the jerich was real?
“It is an evil creature,” Thomas continued, seeking out Sorin’s disbelief. “The only one of its kind, made of shadow and insubstantial mist but potent malice nonetheless. In the Codex, Scholar Lirine speaks of it as the shroud of mankind, all that can be wrong and evil about humanity. After Jeryck’s initial transgression, his flesh fell away from his bones but the soul continued to exist, tormented and without peace. It became maddened, unable to rest or feel. It knows no limits, except those placed on the flesh it must inhabit. Without form, it is a wind of whispering suggestion and nothing more. Once it finds a host, however, it is a very effective assassin.”
“But my father killed it, snapped its neck,” Sorin reiterated. “It’s dead.”
“No,” Thomas said, shaking his head. “Your father bought you time, that’s all. The jerich cannot be killed, not by natural means anyway. It may have been human once but that ended long ago. It roams the world, desiring death—an end to its unending existence—and death for those it loathes. Godwyn Keep, centuries later, discovered what it was and imprisoned it with whatever prayers or spells they had at their disposal. But apparently a dark force or black art has released it from its prison.” Thomas shook his head. “And you say it was with three others?”
Sorin nodded. Someone had freed the monster and sent it after him. The jerich had tried to murder him as a baby; the scars across his left shoulder matched his new wounds. But why? It defied coincidence. He needed to know.
“It is for that reason alone you cannot return to your home,” Thomas said, his pale blue eyes hard. “The jerich knows you live. It will try to track you as soon as it finds a new form.”
“My father’s last words were to find you. He said something about knowing you. How did you know him?”
Thomas shifted in his seat, but his gaze never left Sorin. “I have only known him as a blacksmith, Sorin. He was a good man. An honest, hardworking man.”
The old man lied. Sorin saw it as plainly as the beard on Thomas’s face. There were truthful words hidden beneath the surface of the falsity. The enormity of what Sorin suffered enveloped him, and he suddenly felt very small.
“I have nothing,” Sorin whispered.
“But you’re still here,” Thomas pointed out. “Make it count.”
A moment of silence stilled the room, the only sound the snapping of the dying fire.
“I want to show you something I think you may need,” Thomas said.
The stew providing him a respite from his earlier weariness, Sorin followed Thomas outside. The bright sunshine blinded him. The house was surrounded by a maple forest with limbs lifted skyward to catch the rays of the waning afternoon with their broad, green leaves. On his left, a small corral and shed stood, and two horses—one of them Creek—whickered their greeting. Several thin paths branched off from the main one and disappeared into their respective areas, little more than dirt trails beaten down by usage. The soil beneath his naked feet was cool and welcome. Yet the shakiness of his legs persisted, waiting to put him in bed again.
As if reading his mind, Thomas said, “It’s only a short distance.”
Thomas led the way, his broad shoulders hunched, choosing a skinny path nearly choked by long green grass. Birds chirped and squirrels chattered with one another above him, and a slight wind scented with moisture rustled Sorin’s black hair. A woodpecker hammered a tree far in the distance, its pursuit of grubs echoing throughout the forest amidst the other animal talk. Through the foliage, a thin haze of clouds was beginning to paint over the sapphire sky—a change in the weather to come overnight or the next day.
Sorin kept quiet, curious where this enigma of an old man was taking him, every step a battle of will to remain upright. People in town distrusted Thomas. The man remained apart from the town folk, preferring to be cloistered alone. As a result, the rumors of his past varied and were likely greatly inaccurate. All Sorin really knew of Thomas was what was in front of him—a sad man who possessed a heavy soul.
And he h
ad lied to Sorin.
Find Thomas, his father had said with his dying breath.
Beneath the sorrow, however, a quiet confidence and dignity emanated from Thomas. It was in the old man’s speech, in the tidied order of his home, and his care for a wounded stranger. Thomas had been something special once, but it had fled, leaving him bereft of everything but a shadow resembling that former man.
After a short walk, they entered a quiet glen on a small hillock that rose out of the land like a turtle’s shell. The place was wild and an ancient mystique pervaded the field. Maples surrounded it in a circle, but the sky opened above the hill, lighting a thick patch of blackberry brambles. Rot and mulch assailed Sorin’s nostrils, but the sweeter tang of life was present as well. Small unripe berries littered the plants. The prickly bushes, some of the vines as thick as Sorin’s forearm, snaked and wound around one another, forming a massive, impenetrable wall of knife-like thorns.
On the hilltop, a bare patch of dirt covered by a rounded trellis of iron lay undisturbed by nature’s progress. Two thick rose vines twisted from the dark, rich earth to either side of a worn white stone and twined to the top of the trellis. Amidst their dark green leaves, crimson rose petals blossomed in a splash of color as they opened into the cooling, late afternoon air. Their sweet scent caught Sorin’s nostrils, and drowsiness suddenly stole over him. The stone glowed faintly in the afternoon sunshine, beckoning—a kneeling block for prayer.
“I have never come here,” he said, looking small and wilted. “But this sentuarie is here for you, in case you desire to pray for your parents.”
Song of the Fell Hammer Page 7