The Ashen Levels

by C F Welburn

  “Are you sure this is the way?” Kiela asked. “It does not look safe for the horses.”

  “Yes. Fairly sure.”

  “Fairly?” Balagir growled. “Do I need to remind you that it’s not only my friend’s life at stake, but your own? And more vitally, mine! What has come over you?”

  “Nothing,” he said defensively. “Follow me. Soon there will be signs.”

  So they did, and the afternoon faded as the horses tripped on the roots and stones of the precarious trail. Progress was slow and infuriating, and beneath it simmered the doubts that they were getting steadily more lost.

  Ginike bobbed along in the saddle as though he were a sack of potatoes. He would be less help than usual if they encountered trouble, and if his horse should slip, he would be carried with it. Drak remained suspiciously tight-lipped. The only conversation that coaxed any response from him was when the mysterious wand was brought up.

  Finally, when one of the horses slipped and went to its knees, Balagir lost his patience.

  “Enough! Garill, how far to the chest?”

  “Not far.”

  “Get off your horse,” Balagir demanded. Garill did not respond and looked as though he would have fled if the terrain had been more favourable. “Now!” Balagir barked. Slowly the bald wanderer obeyed. The others did likewise until they formed a tight circle on the narrow path. Ginike remained in his saddle, as attentive as a scarecrow and slightly more unseemly.

  “No more games. Do you know where the chest is?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Balagir felt his ire rise and could have shaken him.

  “You had better explain.”

  “I’ve never seen it, all right? I failed the oath. My nerve wavered.”

  “And the jaegir?”

  “I tricked him into taking the key.” He hung his head shamefully. “He was supposed to do the oath, for both of us. But he fled, and after I was doomed.”

  “So, you’re a coward and a liar.”

  “I didn’t lie about everything. It’s in the Bone Forest, I swear.” Balagir swept his hands around furiously, making the horses snicker.

  “Then all’s well. Take your pick of direction. We’ve still got a short time until dusk.”

  “No, you don’t understand. There’s one there who can help us. That was the oath. Not to find the chest, but to find the one who knew of it.”

  “Out here?” he asked sceptically.

  “Yes. Planter, he’s called. I know how to find him. There will be signs. You must trust me.”

  “Then why lie?”

  “I was afraid you’d take the key away again. I needed you to need me. You don’t know how it feels to be a breaker. None of you do. The hollowness…” Balagir bit his lip, clenched and unclenched his fists.

  “You’d best find this Planter on the morrow,” he said begrudgingly. “Or becoming breaker will be an irrelevant concern.”

  “You’d… kill me?”

  “I’ve got a taste for death smoke,” Balagir bluffed. “Now lead on, and no more—” But his words faltered as Kiela shook his arm. He followed her gaze to where Drak loitered.

  “What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked him. Balagir noticed it too then. An odd question, since his eyes were normal and theirs were so black.

  “What do you mean?” Drak asked hesitantly.

  “Your eyes. They’re blue. What happened?”

  “I…” He stalled, looked around desperately. “The man in the cage… I think I caught something.” An uneasy feeling came over Balagir as he shaped his next words.

  “Drak, we’ve been friends since Cogtown. You can speak plainly.”

  “I feel odd,” he admitted. “Let us speak later. This trail would not be a good place to be caught in the dark.”

  “I know you miss Goffen, but we know each other well enough by now.”

  Drak nodded and looked away. Balagir straightened. He had caught him in two lies.

  “Who are you?” he demanded harshly.

  Kiela’s face dropped, and her sword was suddenly in her hand. The man—the imposter—did not answer. “What did you do with Drak?” Then the morbid realisation sank in. They had burned Drak back in the cage.

  “Speak!” Kiela ordered, touching her sword against his chest.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he warned.

  “You’re hardly in a position to be making threats,” Balagir said coldly.

  “Do you know what a lych is?” he asked quietly. When their expressions remained blank, he went on. “An immortal. Incapable of dying.”

  “Why don’t we put that to the test?” Balagir growled.

  “If you must. But be warned, upon dying I’ll pass into one of you.”

  The redheaded ashen paused. “Explain yourself.”

  “I can no longer recall how many deaths I’ve had; how many times I’ve longed for the end. Enough to not recall my first life. My one, true life.”

  “So, in the cage…”

  “In the cage I was close enough to death for me to make the leap. I only needed someone close enough to be the host.”

  “Drak,” Balagir said sickeningly.

  “I warned that fool to stay away,” Garill said, rubbing his bald dome.

  Drak—the lych—shrugged. “If it hadn’t been him, it would have been you, or one of the others that came afterwards. In truth, I’m glad I became this man and not the tongueless black-eye.”

  “Then Drak… they burned him?” Kiela said in slow realisation.

  “I regret the way your friend met his end, I do, but it was not my doing.”

  “So you’re not an ashen?”

  “No. I’m a lych.”

  “Then why lead us on? Why not simply have escaped when it was your watch?”

  “Because I need you. I think… I think we need each other.”

  Balagir’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Can you imagine what it’s like to starve slowly to death? I mean, really imagine. Your stomach begins to eat itself until the walls collapse. Or be burned and feel those nerves smoulder like so many prickling pins of pain? Or hung until your eyes bulge and pop? Or stabbed? Or mauled? Or strangled? Or impaled? Or drowned? Well, I don’t need to imagine. And no matter how many times I’ve survived, death and its memories get no easier.”

  “So you’re cursed, what’s that to do with us?”

  He shrugged. “We’re connected, somehow, you ashen and I. I don’t know how, but I feel it. I’ve always felt it. Back to a time beyond my memory’s reach.”

  “You’ve known many ashen?”

  “Ashen and men, men and ashen. Generations.”

  Balagir and Kiela shared a glance. This man—this lych—claimed to need them, to share a link to their past. Could something be gained here? Something they were searching for?

  “What makes you think you’re linked to the ashen?” he asked.

  “A feeling,” the lych said helplessly. “I can’t explain it. Like a dream about a dream. But something haunts me. Something…” He shuddered. “Something connected to your fires. I feel it. It is what terrifies me most.”

  Balagir frowned, but slowly a memory came to his mind. The dark feeling from Farthing caused by the fire’s absence. The same he had felt on Coal Isle.

  “The ash creature,” he said and felt his skin prickle.

  “Yes,” the lych said, unwittingly looking over his shoulder as he said so.

  “And why us? I mean, why now? If you’ve met so many generations of our kind, why do you still persist?”

  Once more the lych could only shrug. “I know not. It’s fate that brought us together, and that… wand, the one you showed me, I feel I’ve seen it before somewhere. It tugs at an old memory.”

  “And if we decide to leave you?” Kiela said, still suspicious despite having lowered her blade.

  “Then I must go on alone. I apologise for your friend, but I had no choice. Just as if you killed me now, I would pass into you. And the next p
erson, and the next. My life is endless, and my soul worn thin as old trousers at the knee.”

  “Give us a moment,” Balagir said, and he turned to Kiela.

  “We should end him,” she said bitterly. “For what he did to Drak.”

  “I agree,” hissed Garill. “I do not wish to spend the night with him.”

  “What if he’s telling the truth? What if he does pass into one of us? Have you ever heard of his kind before?”

  “No,” she said darkly. If only Imram were here, he thought for the second time in as many days.

  “Then, we have no choice.”

  “I suppose not.”

  Slowly they turned back.

  “What are we to call you, lych? For I’ll not soil Drak’s memory by using his name.”

  “My name is Jerikin.”

  “Well, Jerikin, if we take you with us, how will you help?”

  “I can fight. And the lands to the south are known to me. As are their rulers—past and present. I know Planter too.”

  “For the moment it seems an alliance may benefit us both. But betray us, and I’ll kill you in a way that you pass into a worm, and bury you so you pass from one worm to the next for all eternity.”

  The lych smiled grimly.

  “So be it,” was all he said and swung up into his saddle.

  They made camp early that night, the treacherous trail exacerbating with the weakening light. At dawn they would have to make the decision to go on or turn back.

  It was difficult to find sleep, and his watch was haunted by the screams of the ashen from Iodon burning slowly in his cage.

  XIV.ii

  PLANTER

  Dawn brought with it an absence of darkness rather than an influx of light; the haunting bone trees crowded them, stark and staggering in from nocturnal listless wanderings.

  Ginike had awoken and eyed the surroundings, unsure on which side of the veil he might have emerged. His dumfounded expression was not helped by his sagging jawline. He touched it gingerly and then ran a finger along his nose. Never had so comical a look of horror played upon a man’s face. He scrambled in his pouch.

  “You really want to do that?” Balagir asked, adjusting his harness.

  “Whaft?” Ginike asked, as eloquently as if he had a mouthful of food.

  “Examine your reflection?”

  “Is it that baft?”

  “You won’t be winning any beauty pageants,” Kiela said rather bluntly, enjoying the vain man’s comeuppance. Ginike’s brow creased in consternation, and he burrowed frantically in his bag as a rabbit might beneath the circling shadow of a glawing. Upon finding his looking-glass he let out a slow moan of despair then attempted to realign his features, which caused no end of wincing and sucking of teeth.

  Balagir had more salient concerns than the end of Ginike’s womanising and, leaving him to whine and snivel, he spoke with the ashen and lych.

  “So, do we go on, or go back?”

  Garill shrugged. “I vote we go on. We’re deep enough now that we should see the signs.”

  “If we are headed south, it would be prudent to rejoin the main trail,” Kiela opined.

  They looked at Drak—at the lych, he had to keep reminding himself—but Jerikin seemed reluctant to give his opinion unless pressed. Finally, he obliged.

  “The last time I saw Planter, he was to the south. I feel this trail may lead us more swiftly to where he currently sows.”

  “Then we carry on. I’m not keen on the idea of retracing the trail we trod yesterday,” Balagir decided, looking at the horses who grazed precariously close to the edge.

  “Then let’s proceed,” Kiela said. “At least off the main road we will avoid any more rogue ashen.”

  So, reaching an accord, they struck camp and were shortly on their meandering, painstaking way.

  As the day drew on, the last of the normal trees fell behind until the forest was nothing but twisted white skeletons. After so long in the golden wood, the world felt bleached and eerie; even the birds had fallen quiet. The wisdom of straying so far from the path became a tentative point, but he kept his misgivings to himself and growled down Ginike’s self-pitying during one particularly bleak stretch.

  When they stopped for the night, the forest took a more sinister turn.

  “These sfticks won’t light,” Ginike complained wretchedly. Balagir was beginning to prefer the man when he had been bumptious and arrogant. He walked over to examine the pile of sticks Ginike had gathered.

  “It seems that Bone Forest is more than just a moniker.”

  Ginike’s eyes widened in realisation before tossing the pile of bones he cradled as though they had turned to snakes. They slid and clattered like old skeletons. “So tonight we musft go coldt,” he said indignantly.

  “There’re worse ways to go than freezing,” Jerikin chimed sagely.

  Ginike curled his lip at the lych’s remark, or at least seemed to, though it was difficult to tell.

  The night was cold, but they huddled close and did not have to fear their light being seen. All in all, Balagir awoke more rested than he had in a long time. They broke camp swiftly and prepared the horses.

  “Your eyes are darker,” Kiela observed as he mounted.

  “Yours too. Not enough to be concerned, but enough to spend at a fire if we ever find our way out of this graveyard.”

  “Even so, we should be careful.”

  He nodded. A vice with virtues was a paradoxical thing, and it would be a slippery slope that carried them down to the dark depths of greed.

  For all its unsettling nature, the twisted canopy let the morning light warm their faces, and they began to make steady progress. It wasn’t until midday that Balagir noticed something in the heights that caused him to pull up. The others slowed and followed his gaze.

  “Some kind of fruitf?” Ginike asked hopefully.

  “Skulls,” the lych clarified.

  “Splendidf,” Ginike lisped.

  “Look at their gaze,” Kiela instructed. “They’re all looking the same way.”

  “That’s how we find him,” Garill explained, a chill in his voice.

  “Then let us follow,” Balagir declared. “Find that to which they gaze.”

  “Or avoid itf,” Ginike suggested. “They don’t bode well.”

  “Sadly, that’s not an option. You’re welcome to turn back, however; this oath does not bind you.”

  Ginike cast a glance back over his shoulder and muttered something incoherent. Needless to say, he stayed put.

  “Well, they’re looking south-easterly,” Kiela said. “We’d still hold our current course.”

  “Just as well. I’d be away from this place as soon as we’re done.” Balagir pinched his feet in the stirrups. “Be at the ready.”

  More and more of those ghastly signposts bloomed upon the trees. The air grew chill and, in those hours, autumn turned to winter. Balagir felt the lining of his season-cloak warming him and was gladdened not to have lost it.

  The skulls for the most part faced south-easterly, but as the day wore on, they swung to the east. Their debatable course lost its sense of prudence as the weak light waned. Then they saw him. A stooped figure with his back to them, some way off through the trees. They shared uneasy glances and approached. Balagir noted that all the fruits were turned in on the cloaked man. His back was so bent that his head was obscured, and a heavy grey sack hung from one shoulder. He did not turn until they were directly behind him.

  The creature twisted awkwardly to look at them. Or rather he would have looked at them, if he had had a head. A crooked spine protruding through the hollow collar bones sported nothing to fill the sagging cowl. The rest of his body was intact, albeit sinew-strung bones the colour of bacon rind and lichen. He creaked as he reached into the sack and withdrew a skull. After some fumbling, he twisted it to the spine and, with a click, regarded them gravely.

  “Who impedes my work?”

  “We are wanderers strayed from the path,” Ba
lagir answered pleasantly.

  “Then return from whence you came,” he said in the welcoming tone one might expect from a headless corpse in a forest made of bones.

  “Would that we could.”

  The empty sockets regarded them. “I know what you seek. It’s been a while since the last one came—” But just then, the jaw came loose, and the skull gawped at them in a leering fashion until the skeleton cumbersomely replaced it with another from his bag. This was in better condition but had the beginning of a bone tree sprouting from its forehead, enhancing his freakishness.

  “You’re no plain wanderers.”

  “We’re ashen,” Balagir confirmed.

  “Ahh,” was all he said, though it may just have been air escaping from his cadaver.

  “Now, can you show us where it is?”

  “No. Be gone. I’ve much to do.” He turned back to scrape at the cold ground with his blackened bone hands.

  “Can we offer you something in exchange for the chest’s whereabouts?”

  The skeleton scratched its head in a way that could have been macabrely comical had they not been talking to a dead man in a dead forest on the brink of nightfall.

  “You offer a bargain?”

  “Yes. You scratch our back, we’ll scratch your back… bone.”

  “Alas, there’s no help. Not anymore. Too long has passed and my work too far done.”

  “What is it you do here?”

  “I plant.”

  “To what end?”

  “To cover the world. To finish my task. To be released.”

  “Who took your head?”

  “Marg. Don’t mock me. You know. All Ythinar knows.”

  Beside them, Jerikin whispered darkly. “All Ythinar knew. She’s been dead these three hundred years. His name was Huir Greenfingers. There was a time when everyone knew his name.”

  “You knew him?” Balagir asked.

  “Personally, no; but I’ve heard of him. He was famously punished by the askaba Marg. If you believe the stories, he was palace gardener in Ozgar. Tale goes that he murdered the young Dunns.”

  “Murdered?”