For the first time in years, Eni thought of his brothers – Val and Seth. He had made Val’s life a misery during their adolescence, belittling him for being bookish. His older brother had been a disappointment to a young Eni. Why couldn’t Val have been interested in hunting and fishing like the other boys at Barrowthorne? Eni hoped Val did not still resent him, for they had not parted well. Seth, on the other hand, had been Eni’s shadow. His youngest brother had worshipped Eni to an embarrassing degree. When Eni had announced that he was leaving home, and heading to Catedrâl in search of a new life, Seth had wanted to join him. The hurt on his brother’s face when Eni told him that he was not welcome, had only strengthened Eni’s resolve to leave Seth behind. He did not need anyone, and he had been determined to prove it.
Only now, standing at his execution, did Eni fully realise how much he had lost by not befriending his brothers.
Panic surged through Eni and his legs went weak. He only just prevented himself from collapsing onto the platform and prematurely throttling himself. His vision speckled and the roar of the crowd dimmed and grew louder in waves.
A horn echoed across the square, signalling the hanging was about to begin. The realmlord got to his feet. He looked brittle, and his red and black robes swamped his gaunt frame. The guards descended from the platform, leaving Eni alone.
The crowd quietened, collectively holding their breaths.
The realmlord raised his right arm high into the air.
“Eni Falkyn, weaponsmith of Catedrâl,” Realmlord Valense's voice echoed across the square. “You are deemed to be guilty of murdering my first-born son, Flynn Valense. The punishment for this is to hang by the neck until you are dead.”
“I am innocent!” Eni shouted in desperation, “I did not kill your son!”
The realmlord let his arm fall.
The executor at the foot of the platform pulled the rope that released the trap door on the platform above.
Eni heard the creak of the pulley and closed his eyes. All thought fled his mind as terror seized him. He felt the trapdoor under his feet start to move before it suddenly jerked to a halt. Terrible moments passed as Eni felt the trapdoor buck and jerk, but it did not shift.
Moments passed, and it was only when the crowd started to boo and hiss that Eni realised the trapdoor had jammed. The guards snarled as they climbed back onto the platform and were pelted with rotten food. The crowd were not getting the amusement they had come for. Someone had to be blamed.
The guards removed the noose from around Eni’s neck and shoved him aside so they could check the trap door. Eni watched mutely while they inspected, opened and closed it. The hatch did not appear obstructed. Satisfied, the guards manoeuvred Eni back into place and re-fastened the noose.
The crowd went still in collective anticipation. Eni closed his eyes and for the first time prayed to Gods he had never believed in. The executioner yanked down on the pulley and grunted. He pulled again and swore.
The trapdoor had stuck fast and would not open. This time the booing and hissing was accompanied by cat-calls and heckling. The guards climbed back on to the platform and were splattered with turds.
Eni’s mind had frozen. Fear had dulled his senses to the point that he felt as if he was watching the spectacle from afar. The guards manhandled him to one side and, once again, examined the trapdoor. When the executioner threw his weight down on the rope, the oiled wood slid easily, not catching in the slightest. To test the trapdoor when bearing a load, the guards hoisted a sack of wheat onto the platform. When the executioner pulled down on the rope, the trapdoor gave way and the sack plummeted through the gap, landing with a thump at the executioner’s feet.
“Get on with it!” A man at the front of the crowd roared. “Hang the murderer! Let him swing!”
Eni was barely aware of being pushed back onto the trapdoor and having the noose refitted. The executioner took a deep breath and threw himself down on the rope for the third time.
He cursed foully.
The trapdoor was still jammed.
Eni looked across the crowd and saw the realmlord and his wife, ashen-faced and frightened. Mattias, however, was incensed. His handsome features were twisted.
At the foot of the platform Fain was ranting.
“There are dark arts at work here I’d wager! There are more ways to kill a murderer if he won’t hang!” the weaponsmith shouted. He held up an anvil and brandished it high above his head. “A lynching is what’s required here!”
Eni was sure the mob would trample the guards and rip him to pieces, and they might have, had not a voice – young, male and angry – cut through the din.
“By the law of Palâdnith, everyone here knows a man who survives an execution three times walks free. You cannot kill him now. The Gods have spoken!”
Necks craned to catch a glimpse of the speaker. He had a marked southern accent, with a rolled ‘r’ which was uncommon in these parts. However, the man had dissolved into the crowd as soon as he had spoken.
Flynn’s brother was having none of such talk. Mattias stalked forward to the front of the podium, shoving his father aside, as he did so.
“The murderer must not live!” he shouted. “If the gibbet will not take him, who here has the courage to see justice done!”
“To go against the Gods is to invite pestilence, war and famine into your midst,” the southerner responded. “A thrice executed man who still lives has proved his innocence and must go free!”
“Who speaks!” Mattias roared. He suddenly appeared much older than his sixteen winters. “Show your face coward or speak not!”
It was too late now for Mattias to incite the entire crowd to turn against Eni. Instead, the mob split in two: those who wanted Eni dead and those who feared the wrath of the Gods too much to defy them. Palâd, the Goddess of the Earth and Nith, the God of the Sky, were not lightly crossed. The folk of Catedrâl knew the law, even if many had not chosen to remember it on this day.
The crowd surged one way and then another. Fights broke out and fists flew. Both sides were evenly matched and what had started as a hanging quickly dissolved into a pitch-battle on Gibbet’s Corner.
Eni watched the crowd boil beneath him. Bodies hammered up against the scaffold and the structure swayed dangerously. Eni, who still stood on the trapdoor with the noose about his neck, could only look on, helpless.
The crowd heaved like an angry sea. Each wave that broke against the platform weakened the structure further – until, finally, it toppled forward into the crowd.
Eni would have surely been throttled, had not the platform been attached to the gallows themselves. When the platform fell, the whole structure, complete with its grisly ornaments, collapsed on top of the writhing crowd. Many, not quick enough to move out of the way in time, were pinned underneath.
Eni collided with the beam that his noose was secured to. Heart pounding, he shifted back against the brace and rubbed the rope binding his wrists against the iron edge until it frayed enough for him to break free. Then, he wriggled out of the noose. He shimmied along the beam and climbed onto the top of the fallen structure. He was clambering over the pile of splintered boards when two men emerged onto the top of the ruined platform.
Fain and Wolloch, another member of the weaponsmith guild who had always resented him, came at Eni like charging rams. They collided with him and, together, the three men toppled off the platform into the surging crowd.
The mob saved Eni. The moment he hit the ground he kept low, wriggling, scrabbling and crawling. If people crashed into him, stomped on him or kicked him, he did not feel it. Now that he had so narrowly escaped death, clutching on to life was all he cared about. He was half way to freedom when something heavy landed across his legs and a heavy fist punched him hard in his lower back. Fain, bleeding profusely from his nose, and cursing, had found him.
“You’re not getting away Falkyn!” he roared.
Fain pinned Eni to the ground and pummelled him with his fists.
On his back and at a clear disadvantage, Eni fought back blindly, gouging at Fain's eyes and landing a few bruising punches. Still, Fain had years of frustration and resentment to unleash. He grasped Eni around the throat and began throttling him.
Fain’s grip, like an iron clamp after years at the forge, crushed down on Eni’s windpipe. Feeling himself choke, Eni kicked upwards and thrashed around in an attempt to dislodge his attacker – but Fain hung on. Eni’s vision darkened and the screams of the crowd were replaced with the roaring in his ears. A few seconds more and Fain would have got the best of him.
Suddenly, the stranglehold on his throat disappeared.
Eni fell back choking and coughing as air rushed back into his lungs. Next to him, he could hear Fain howling. Still choking, Eni clambered up on all fours. Fain was bent over, clutching his head.
“This way,” a voice, young and impatient, with a marked southern accent, sounded close to Eni’s right ear, “before your friend realises I didn’t just split his head open.”
Eni staggered to his feet and was confronted by a slight young man with nondescript features, mousy hair and intense blue eyes. He was holding an iron bar in one hand and wore travel-worn clothes, torn from the fray he had just waded through.
“This way,” he repeated before taking off through the crowd.
Still coughing and wheezing, Eni followed him.
***
A chill, smoky dusk settled over Catedrâl. The city’s spires peeked out of the murk and the temperature dropped sharply; there would be a hard frost this eve. On the outskirts of the city, two figures slipped through the mist towards the sparse copses of trees that began where the houses ended.
Eni moved close behind the young man who had saved his life. Hours had passed since then but the two men had barely shared a word – there had been no time. Eni’s breath steamed in front of him and sweat poured down his back. His limbs shook in exhaustion but he forced himself on.
Relief swept over Eni as they entered the edge of the woods. There had been times over the last few hours when he had been sure they would not escape. In the end it had been the hysterical crowd, the same folk who had clamoured to see him die, who had saved his life. The irony of it was not lost on Eni, not that he’d had time to ponder it. The townsfolk had run like maddened cattle about the streets to escape the violent battle at Gibbet’s Corner and slowed the guards down just enough to let Eni and the southerner get a head-start.
The last of the light faded and soon the two men were blundering forward in the dark. Finally, even the southerner flagged. They stopped at the edge of a stand of Tarneedle trees and bent double to catch their breaths.
“We stop here tonight,” the southerner gasped.
Eni was in no position to argue and followed the southerner as he moved to the base of one of the Tarneedles and began to climb.
Tarneedle trees carpeted vast tracts of southern Palâdnith. They had wide trunks covered in horny red bark and soared dead-straight into the heavens. Sturdy branches bristled from the trunk from around eight feet above the ground. The Tarneedle’s foliage was dense with layer upon layer of wide fans of dark green needles. It was an ideal place to hide from prying eyes.
The southerner pulled himself up easily into the tree. Eni followed, grunting with the effort it took to haul his weakened body up into the lowest branches. After that it was relatively easy. The men climbed high; up to where the trunk thinned to five-feet across. A hammock of Tarneedle fans surrounded them. The exterior of the tree was crusted with ice but here, against the trunk, it was dry and the dense foliage protected them from the wind. Nonetheless, it was not warm. The cold began to bite at Eni as soon as he sunk down on a branch and leant his back against the trunk.
“They’ll never find us here.” Eni sighed, relief flooding through him.
“Let’s hope not,” his companion replied, his expression grim.
“I’m not moving another step till dawn.”
The southerner watched him silently for a moment before answering.
“It’s not the realmlord’s men that concern me,” the young man replied. “There are fouler things out in the dark searching for you tonight Falkyn.”
Chapter Six
Visitors at the Red Tussock Inn
Val lay, staring up at the darkness and willed time to stand still.
His chamber sat at the top of one of the keep’s lower towers and was very quiet at night. Usually the silence calmed Val but not so this morning – his breathing seemed obscenely loud and he could hear his heart beating in his ears.
Finally, Val threw back the covers and sat up, lighting a candle on the small table next to his bed. The flame cast a weak light over his stark living quarters. Despite that he had lived here for ten years, there was little evidence of the character of the man who inhabited the chamber. Val’s true home was his library and he spent very little time within this room. His narrow bed sat up against one wall and a desk against the other. There were a couple of shelves with books upon them and a small chest of drawers for his clothes.
Shivering in his nightshirt, Val crossed to the window, unlatched the shutters and looked outside. The sun was rising. Val’s window looked west across the lake and he could see streaks of red and gold rippling across the dark waters of Lake Tearfall. From his window, Val had an uninterrupted view of water, land and sky. This morning, grey mist curled like wizard’s beard across the beaten bronze surface of the lake. Behind the body of water lay thickly forested hills. Beyond the hills rose quartz peaks, spiked like the canines of a great predator through the mist. It was a beautiful view but the sight of it could not settle the churning of Val’s stomach.
Despite the cold, Val stayed at the windowsill for a while and watched dawn creep across the sky. Finally, with chattering teeth, he padded across to where a porcelain bowl filled with water sat on the top of the chest of drawers. He stripped off his nightshirt, splashed water over his goose-pimpled skin and dried himself off with a coarse towel. Then, rummaging through his drawers he pulled out the warmest clothes he owned: wool leggings and undershirt, a leather jerkin and his best cloak. He would leave his moth-eaten librarian’s robes behind.
Once he was dressed, Val unhooked an old leather satchel from where it had hung on the wall since his arrival at Tarrancrest. Val had been twenty-five then, and still carrying the weight of an unhappy adolescence with him. He had grown into a man here at Tarrancrest, but had not ventured outside the castle’s walls in all that time. Val felt a pang of nostalgia as he ran his hand over the hard, cracked leather. He had worn the satchel strapped across his chest on the journey here. It had taken nearly two weeks to reach Tarrancrest from Barrowthorne, on a shaggy black pony his father had gifted him. In his satchel, he had carried his most prized possession – the letter with Realmlord Kaur’s personal seal offering him the position of librarian at Tarrancrest. Val had gazed upon that letter many times during the journey here, still hardly able to believe his good fortune.
Val sighed and pushed away thoughts of happier times. A decade on, he did not feel so fortunate to be in Realmlord Kaur’s service.
It did not take Val long to pack his satchel with the few clothes and possessions he would bring on this journey. He would have liked to bring books to read, but such objects were heavy and risked damage during the trip.
Outside, the sun had risen – he could not linger here any longer. Val hoisted the heavy satchel onto his shoulder and stepped out into the stairwell. Stairs made of worn red stone snaked down the tower. Below, the labyrinth of hallways that usually bustled with life stretched ahead of Val, silent and empty. Torches burned low on their racks and Val heard a rat scamper across the stone floor behind him.
Val made his way towards the central stairwell and felt the weight of the square, solid bulk of the castle press down upon him. The great stone staircase corkscrewed its way down to the ground level. Val passed a few servants going about their morning routine; some carrying linen and others buckets o
f night soil. Still bleary-eyed with sleep, they paid Val little notice.
Val eventually emerged into the outer-bailey. The bulk of Tarrancrest Keep reared above him. He glanced up at the battlements and caught sight of the Farindell Flag – green and black – flapping in the breeze from one of the squat, square towers.
Val took the path across the outer-bailey towards the gatehouse. Two members of the Tarrancrest Guard protected the gates. In leather armour and rippling green cloaks, they watched Val under hooded gazes when he stopped before them. There appeared to be no one else around and Val fidgeted.
The sun had now cleared the edge of the city walls, but there was a chill breeze coming in off the lake and Val hugged his cloak close to him as he waited. He felt conspicuous and began to wonder if he had misheard Lord Kaur. Perhaps the realmlord had changed his mind overnight or the party had left without him.
Then, Val caught sight of figures approaching from the Keep.
Captain Tobin strode ahead of Lady Cirinna and Mirkel Rod, his heavy featured face set in hard, determined lines. Tobin and Lady Cirinna were wearing thick travelling cloaks. Tobin had swapped his heavy chain mail for the relative comfort of boiled leather. Lady Cirinna’s cloak was forest-green and she had pulled her hood up, casting her face into shadow. Val was alarmed to see that others were not joining them.
“Are we not travelling in company?” he asked Mirkel when the chamberlain reached him.
Mirkel blew on his chilled fingers and shook his head.
“There’s just the three of you. Also, I should inform you that you will not be travelling by ship from River’s End, as is the usual route to Westhealm from here. Instead, you will be taking the road over the High Dragon Spines.”
Val frowned. “Why?”
“It’s quicker than the sea-route which would take you at least another two weeks,” Mirkel explained. “The realmlord has demanded speed.”
Journey of Shadows (The Palâdnith Chronicles Book 1) Page 8