by Scott Kaelen
“I think I’ll circle north toward the Knots.” Eriqwyn reached to her bedside table and picked up her hunting dagger. “It’s Banaelag – best month for hunting blind pygmies. Maybe I’ll be lucky and thin their numbers by one.”
“You’ll be lucky to spot one at all.” Linisa ran a hand through her mop of yellow hair. “Last time I saw a pygmy was two years ago, and if I’d blinked I’d have missed it.”
“I found the fresh remains of a young fawn last week, its innards turned to mush. The pygmies about, but they’re wily.” Eriqwyn plucked a calloused finger against the tip of the dagger and gave Linisa a crooked smile. “I could do with killing another of those little bastards.”
Linisa took the torch from the wall and winked at Eriqwyn. “Good hunting.” She left the room and closed the door behind her, and Eriqwyn’s gaze lingered on the oaken boards for a long moment.
With a sigh, she slid her dagger into its sheath. “Good hunting, indeed.”
Eriqwyn strung her bow, and with a last glance around her bedchamber she stepped out into the calm night. Beyond the manor’s garden, the village green was empty and dark, with a scattering of faint lights through shutter-slats on several of the surrounding houses. At this time of the night a hush permeated the village for several glorious hours.
Eriqwyn crossed the green and turned onto the trail that led to the edge of the village. The black shape of the Founding Oak loomed into focus, blotting out the star-dusted sky. She slowed as she neared the tree. Her gaze drifted up its trunk to the crook of the lowest bough. A faint touch of moonlight caught the object nestled between trunk and bough, an object which had been there since long before Eriqwyn was born. The skull’s sockets sucked in the blackness of the night, seeming to gaze northwards from its tilted position as if seeking the moon, or in longing for its forsaken home so far over the horizon.
She continued down the trail and was soon beyond the village’s perimeter. After several minutes, the trail branched off to the right up a gently rising tree-lined slope that led directly over Dreaming Dragon Brae. When she reached the clearing at the top of the hill, Eriqwyn stepped across to the ivy-coated Dragoneye, set her bow beside it and leaned her elbows on the stone’s leafy top. For a minute she looked across the dark clearing, then closed her eyes and soaked in the peace of the heathland. There was no rush to complete the patrol. She’d been a hunter for twenty years, a Warder for the last twelve, and First Warder for seven. In all that time there had rarely been a need for urgency. Cravants, lyakyns, blind pygmies, sarbeks, all of the most dangerous creatures of the heath were thankfully few and far between. Whenever a villager was killed by such a creature, it could often be put down to stupidity, like when Eriqwyn had found Demelza on this very spot days earlier.
Of course she was in danger, Eriqwyn told herself. Any creature can seem timid one moment, and the next it’s ripping your throat out. It’s all part of survival.
The snapping of a distant twig pricked her senses, and Eriqwyn’s eyes shot open and peered across the top of the ivy. Soft footfalls were approaching from the north-west, climbing through a less-trodden trail towards the glade. She ducked behind the stone block, rested her back against it, and waited.
The soft crunch of dried pine needles underfoot entered the glade, paused, then drew closer. A slim figure stepped alongside the Dragoneye stone, glanced down at Eriqwyn, and froze.
“Hello, Demelza.”
“F-first Warder?”
“Yes indeed,” Eriqwyn said flatly.
“Wh-what are—”
“What am I doing here?”
Demelza nodded, a dumb expression on her face.
“I could ask you the same thing.”
“I… I was out on me wanders, is all.”
“Were you, now. And where did your wanders take you on this pleasant night?”
“Been up on the Knots.” Demelza was clearly feigning indifference. “I ain’t done no wrong.”
“I didn’t say you had.” Eriqwyn rose from her crouch. “Did you see anything interesting on your travels? Any more sarbeks, perhaps? Ghouls out from the Forbidden Place wandering the heath? Or, goddess forbid, any outlanders?” Demelza’s eyes widened at that, and Eriqwyn’s narrowed. “Do you have something to say, girl?”
Demelza shook her head vigorously. “I ain’t seen nothin’. I, er, I sweared it.”
Eriqwyn folded her arms and scrutinised the girl. Demelza’s face was a wan grey in the darkness, but Eriqwyn could see enough to know she was hiding something. She stepped closer to the girl and sniffed the air around her. “You smell of woodsmoke. Did you make yourself a fire?”
“Aye. I mean, yes, that’s what I done.”
“Mm-hm. Show me your tinderbox.”
“My what?”
“Your fire-making tools, child. You can’t make fire out of thin air. Or did you rub sticks together?”
Demelza paused, then nodded. “Rubbed sticks.”
Eriqwyn smiled coldly. “That’s quite the skill to learn. It seems my sister and Wayland were right about you, after all. Go on, then.”
“Go on, what, First Warder?”
“Start me a fire with your stick trick.”
“Uh…”
“Step to it, girl! I don’t have all night.”
Demelza glanced around, then jogged across to the trees where she selected a handful of branches and twigs. She brought them back and dropped them near the Dragoneye stone. As she squatted over them, she looked up, and Eriqwyn raised an eyebrow.
Demelza bunched the twigs into a pile, picked up a pair of branches and rubbed them against each other.
Oh, dear, Eriqwyn thought. Just as I anticipated. Demelza clearly had no idea how to start a fire by friction. Eriqwyn waited, content to let the girl make a fool of herself until she admitted she was trying to deceive her.
A dim glow appeared at the base of the twigs, and a tiny flame caught, fluttering in the faint breeze. Demelza dropped the branches and rose to her feet. The flame guttered and died.
Eriqwyn stared at the fading ember, then turned a fierce gaze on the girl. “How did you do that?”
Demelza swallowed. “Stick trick.”
“No. Not stick trick. I could have left you there for a year playing with those branches and you would not – should not – have been able to start a fire. Yet you did.” Eriqwyn took her by the shoulders. “Where have you been tonight? What were you hiding when I asked if you’d seen anything interesting? Did you?”
Demelza gasped and looked at Eriqwyn’s hand on her shoulder. “Please, I… I sweared I wouldn’t tell. To the goddess,” she added with an emphatic nod.
Eriqwyn gripped her tighter. “You swore what, and to whom? Tell me now or you’ll be facing the Founding Laws. Do you understand?”
Demelza was shaking. “I seen them. An’ they seen me. I told ‘em, I said they shouldn’t oughta have taken it. They said it were all right, that they’d be long gone at sun-up.”
“Who? Taken what? Where were they?” Eriqwyn released the girl.
“Gr-grey Knot,” Demelza said.
“Graegaredh Knot?”
Demelza nodded.
Eriqwyn drew a slow breath, forcing herself to calm. “Now, Demelza, tell me who you saw, and what they had in their possession. Think carefully.”
“Out…” Demelza’s features scrunched as if she would cry. “Outlanders,” she whispered, lowering her gaze to the ground. “They went into the Forbidden Place. Took a deadstone.”
Eriqwyn felt the world turn beneath her feet as the girl’s words struck her.
“Show me,” Eriqwyn said, her tone like ice.
“But—”
“If you're telling me the truth, this is why Warders have protected our village since the ancestors founded it. You and I are going to the Knots. Now.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
RUDE AWAKENING
Oriken awoke with a start, gasping into the blackness as hands clawed at his shoulders. He reached to fi
ght them off but they withdrew. His hat was swatted from his face and he stared up at a rotten face that quickly morphed into Jalis.
“Suffering stars,” he grumbled as Jalis tried to mask her amusement. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
He drew a shuddering breath and lifted his gaze to the sky, where the fading forms of dream-ghosts flitted across Haleth’s cloud-smeared surface. Blinking the confusion of sleep away, he pushed himself to his elbows and regarded Jalis as she crouched beside him.
“For a minute there, you refused to wake,” Jalis told him in hushed tones. She picked up his fallen hat and shoved it onto his head. “It was a commendable display of resistance to which I’m glad you finally succumbed. Are you ready to take the shift?”
He glanced across to Dagra. Their bearded friend was sound asleep, curled in a ball close to the fire. Oriken sat up and rubbed a hand over his unshaven face. “Just give me a minute.”
He reached from the bedroll and tossed a branch onto the fire. As the flames grew, the fresh wood gasped long and low. Oriken grabbed his swordbelt and climbed to his feet.
No sooner was he off the bedroll than Jalis settled down upon it, oblivious to his thankfully fading predicament. “You don’t mind me taking your warm one, do you?” she asked, though there was no doubt it was a rhetorical question.
You know me too well, he thought.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin. “Watch out for pitchfork-wielding peasants,” she said, then winked. “I hear they’re savage at this time of the year.”
He frowned in feigned annoyance, then smiled. “I’ll be sure to shout for your help if I get accosted by any.”
Jalis closed her eyes.
He clasped the swordbelt about his hips and clipped the mini crossbow to it slung his pack onto his shoulder and crossed to a boulder at the edge of the clearing. Dropping his back beside the stone, he stepped up to the trees and unbuttoned his trousers.
No rush for a perimeter check, he thought as he pissed. Jalis will have done one not long ago.
When he was finished, he returned to the boulder and sat with his back against it. For a long while, he did nothing but gaze around the clearing and into the black night beyond. High above, Haleth’s light was diffused behind a passing cloud. Closer to the tops of the nearby trees, the dark-green moon of Larindis was difficult to discern in a clear patch of sky. Behind Oriken and down the embankment, the trickle of the stream was as soothing as a lullaby.
He removed his hat, placed it beside the crossbow and rested the back of his head against the cool stone.
Still tired. Would have had enough sleep if that girl hadn’t come spying on us. At least I finally got clean.
He reached for the backpack, dragged it closer and took out the jewel.
He glanced only briefly at the runes upon the silver band. Those were Jalis’s department. He was more interested in the jewel itself. Each angular face was the size of his thumbnail, flat and smooth, jutting out in low pyramids of four faces each. He traced a fingertip over the surface. The jewel was neither cold nor warm, and the darkened core was difficult to see in this light. Now, after all they’d witnessed and heard from the peasant girl, he thought he could sense the wrongness in the oversized gem.
Demelza had called it a deadstone. Somehow that sounded more menacing than burial jewel. Still, the notion was ridiculous that the jewel could be responsible for the dead rising and attacking people. He chuckled quietly.
Laugh it up all you like, he thought. The dead aren’t laid at peace like they should be – or, in the case of Cunaxa Chiddari, stood upright – and they might’ve feasted on us like the kid in Demelza’s story if we hadn’t escaped.
Why the undead wandered the graveyard at all was something he couldn’t fathom, but the how of it, according to Demelza, was the jewel.
Jewels, he corrected. Just how many more of these things are there? No, forget it, at least for now.
He felt a sudden need to be back in Alder’s Folly, sat at their usual table near the tavern’s bar.
I could share a barrel of Carradosi Pale with the others right now, or spend a bit more coin on a cask of Redanchor.
He placed the jewel in the pack and knotted the cord. For a while he sat there, listening to the stream, the fire, the frogs and heath-hoppers and the lonely call of a nightjar. Eventually, the eastern sky began to lighten to a deep purplish-red, streaks of trailing clouds visible above the rolling horizon. Somewhere in that direction was Demelza’s village, nestled away in some hiding place. There was still a good hour or two until dawn proper, but the time for Demelza’s villagers to launch a night attack was over, so it seemed that the girl had stayed good to her word. Not that he imagined she understood what she’d agreed to, but still.
A groan issued from near the fire as Dagra rolled over and sat up. He glanced at the flames, blinked, looked across at Jalis’s sleeping form, then he spotted Oriken and grunted. Oriken lifted a hand in greeting, and Dagra climbed to his feet and wandered over, pausing half-way to place his hands on his knees and break wind.
Oriken grinned. “I see you’re back to your usual self.”
“Aye, not quite, but I’m on the mend.”
“Good, because as far as I’m concerned we can be walking from dawn till dusk, get as far as we can from this dismal place.” Oriken shifted his back across the boulder to give Dagra room to sit beside him. “I mean, I know those things aren’t coming out into the heath, but that’s not the point. This whole region is wrong.”
Dagra nodded. “Wrong is the word. So, you’re not still keen to head back in there?”
Oriken chuckled softly. “The temptation’s always there to discover places and things that are lost to history. That’ll never change. But, yeah, the urge to delve inside the city isn’t so strong now, not since that girl showed up. I don’t like the implications it carries.”
Dagra coughed into his hand. “A girl has you more worried than a sprawling, god-neglected necropolis?”
Oriken shrugged. “Somehow, yes.”
Dagra spat. “Good, because not on my life am I going back into those unholy burial grounds again. We've seen some horrors in our time as freeblades, but all the dead things tended not to move.”
Oriken glanced at Dagra and studied him a moment. His cheeks had regained some colour, though his eyes were still puffy and sore-looking. He did seem to be perking up some, though. “You sure you’ll be strong enough for a day’s walk?”
For a moment Dagra looked sombre, his fingers toying with the emblem of Avato on the leather cord at his neck, then a smile spread within the beard. “I feel as lively as a lyre, Oriken. In fact, I’m as ready as you are to be leaving.”
They talked for a while, not about the graveyard or the city, but about normal stuff like being back in the Folly in their rooms at the Lonely Peddler, comfortable beds with goose-down quilts, the communal bath filled with freshly-boiled water, and the finest meals in Caerheath courtesy of Luthan. They talked about simpler, understandable contracts – escorting people or items safely from one place to another, and getting rid of troublesome creatures or bandits.
“It’s strange that what we miss the most are the every-day things,” Oriken said. “The ones you don’t realise you take for granted until you notice their absence.”
Dagra huffed in agreement. “You know, there’s still an hour or more till sun-up. I’m still a bit drained but I want to pull my weight. Let me handle the rest of the watch. Go and grab yourself some more sleep. I’ve got it covered.”
“You sure?”
“Go ahead.”
“Hm. I didn’t sleep much earlier, truth be told.” Oriken slapped a hand to Dagra’s shoulder and pushed himself to his feet. “You want me to check the perimeter before I head off?”
Dagra waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll do it.”
“Fine. Wake me if you need anything, okay?”
“Fuck off. If I need a shit I’ll go behind the boulder. And I reckon I can wipe
my own arse. Thanks for the offer, though. Actually, now you mention it, I could do with a piss.”
Oriken grinned and turned to walk away, then paused. “If you spot any rabbits on your patrol, do shoot one for us, won’t you? A hot breakfast would be welcome. I’m starving.”
“Oh, aye. I’m a lousy shot at the best of times, and you know it. Go on, let me have some peace and quiet.”
Jalis was sound asleep on her back, breathing silently beneath his blanket. Only the slight rise and fall of her chest told him she was alive. He settled down on the empty bedroll beside her and pulled a blanket across himself. No sooner had he closed his eyes than fatigue hit him. It had been a long day. Truth was, it had been a long fortnight, but after their encounter with the corpses and learning that there was some sort of civilisation down here, the whole trek was catching up to him. This time he sank quickly into a deep, and dreamless, sleep.
“Oriken! Get up!”
He awoke with a start, pushed himself to a sitting position and peered around the clearing. Jalis was stuffing their belongings into packs.
“What is it,” he asked as he rose to his feet.
“Dagra’s gone.”
“What do you mean he’s gone?”
“How would you like me to explain it?” She didn’t look up from her work. “I’ve been all around the hill. He’s gone, and so is the jewel.”
Oriken was having trouble processing the information. He glanced to the boulder where he’d left Dagra only an hour or so earlier. He almost expected to see him wander around from behind the rock, belching and buckling his belt. But he didn’t. The boulder was alone. The pack he’d left with Dagra was there, its top opened. The mini crossbow and bolts lay on the ground as he’d left them. And then it hit him.
“Shit,” he hissed.
“Shit, indeed.”
“He’s taken the jewel.”
“Right.”
“He’s taken the bloody jewel!”
Jalis hoisted her pack onto her back and grabbed the one by Dagra’s bedroll. “Are you going to sit there repeating yourself or get off your arse and help me?”