Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial-Chapter 3Arc 7: : Into Winter

We traveled into the sprawling countryside of Reynwell. I left at night, taking a side gate out of the city to lessen the number of people who’d mark my exit. I kept my cloak’s hood up.

Only once did I look back, when I ascended the hills beyond the coastlands and looked down into the river valleys that fed into the bay. Dawn crept over the horizon, slowly illuminating the capital of the Accorded Realms. The city sprawled even from so far, a forest of bridges and churches and storm walls enclosing all that humanity. The Riven Sea looked cold and somehow lonely.

That would be my last sight of it for a long time. I could see a single ship out in the bay. It must have been massive, a carrack perhaps, but I could barely make it out from this distance.

An icy wind curled along the back of my neck. Even despite the warmth of auratic fire in me, I shivered at that gust. I turned to look into the endless expanse of wilderness and winter battered kingdoms that waited for me.

It suddenly seemed very quiet.

I spurred Morgause on.

Pure white snow carpeted the rolling fields. Hamlets and castles vassal to the great city I’d just left offered warmth and company, but I passed them all by. Bare trees with icicles hanging down from frozen branches grew more numerous as I left the croplands and tamer woods behind.

We traveled for many hours, then stopped in a dense copse of woods so my chimera could rest and I could eat. I used my crossbow to catch a wolpertinger the size of a big dog. It’d been hunting me for many miles.

I ate strips of the dead predator, tossing some of the uncooked ones to Morgause so she could snap them out of the air. I’d made a fire, and idly stared into it and let my thoughts drift where they would.

The cold woods were quiet and dim, the sky overcast and the canopy grown thick enough to shadow my nook. So it didn’t surprise me when they drew close.

The dead.

They appeared as shadows that didn’t match the light, as furtive whispers, as an almost liquid quality to the environment’s darkest corners. They crawled close on wispy fingers, clawing at the edges of my camp’s light without breaking into its circle. Their voices formed a quiet din, incomprehensible, a scratching at the edge of my thoughts.

But some words broke through the chorus. Warm us. Again. Let us burn together. Share it with us.

Morgause lifted her head and stared at the suddenly crawling woods. She made no noise, but her tufted ears pricked straight up and her unblinking red eyes were wide and alert.

Do not deny us, the dead said. You would be alone but us.

You owe us. We saved you.

Still I kept my silence, idly eating and letting my gaze remain fixed on the campfire. The ghosts writhed in frustration.

Bastard!

Hypocrite.

You will die alone weeping.

I finally looked up from the fire when one of the ghosts stepped just up to the edge of the light. This one looked different than the others. Larger, more complete. Though the gloom seemed to cling, obscuring specific features, I could make out the richly woven and layered fabrics of a nobleman. The ghost’s hands moved, folding over the waist to give me a glimpse of a ring set with a sapphire. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

He was tall, with dusky skin and hair combed back from a proud face. He wore a layered gown like some dark emperor, though he’d only been a backwater fief lord. His violet eyes crinkled at the corners as he regarded me.

“I didn’t kill you,” I said to the ghost.

“No,” Orson Falconer agreed in his sonorous voice. He knelt, adjusting his fine garments, and faced me from eye level. He had a hole in his head, which oozed thick blood that ran down the bridge of his proud nose. “However, I was marked for execution. Had you not been there, meddling, that old doctor would never have managed to kill me.”

“I feel no guilt for you,” I told him calmly. “You were a madman, Orson.”

The dead baron blinked and seemed to consider that. “Perhaps I was.”

I’d grown more inured over time to these fragments of people, these sapient memories. Yet, an old anger flickered to fresh life in me.

“That rite the Vykes used to bind Yith… that was your work. Those were your people, Orson.”

The Baron of Caelfall nodded. “Yes.”

“Why?” I asked, unable to understand.

He studied me with his violet eyes for a time before responding. “Because you and I are soldiers in a war. A war which threatens to invalidate our very existence. There are powers involved which see us as little more than motes of dust. If the gods, if God, would make of us as slaves and patsies, then I shall defy them.” Ꞧ𝐚NÓＢЕŠ

“You really think you’re noble for that, don’t you?” I shook my head. “That you’re some kind of hero? What a joke.”

The Vykes might have been the ones to use it in the end, but it didn’t change that Orson had shown them how. I’d seen the things he’d made inside his labs, monsters grown in vats or stitched from living flesh.

No poetic words about gods and cosmic wars would sway me into thinking it was right. He sounded just like Laertes.

Orson placed his fingers to his chest. “You and I could have been allies. We could have fought for the selfsame cause.”

I felt disgust. “Never.”

A faint smile quirked the nobleman’s lips. “There are more heads in that forest in your dreams than there were bodies in that chapel, Alken.”

“Your people were innocent. Those I’ve killed are murderers and traitors.”

Orson laughed. “The Choir will never redeem you, Alken. You yourself do not expect it. They will chew you up and spit you out. The people you martyr yourself for will ostracize you, call you butcher and monster. They have before, and they still think it, say it in their private councils. They know you are dangerous.”

The ghost pointed at me. His hand entered the radius of the campfire’s light. The hand turned insubstantial, wispy, forming a clawed digit aimed at my heart.

“Your soul will burn. Whether in golden flames or hellfire, there will be no rest for you. There is no rest for any of us, ever. We are trapped in this purgatory, all of us. The sheol beneath this land is becoming too full. The dead spill out, poisoning our world with bitterness and delusion.”

He leaned closer, lowering his voice.

“The Onsolain will quit these shores and abandon us. They only wait here in the hopes that their chosen one will return to them, but their queen has been gone seven centuries. If God did not perish in the war to reclaim Onsolem, then She has likely forsaken this world.”

Orson’s rich voice dropped into a whisper. “Have you considered that She never meant to return? That She intended this world to be a prison?”

His bright eyes were wide, unblinking, full of a feverish anger. They rolled up to meet mine.

“The Choir of Heaven is not here to guide and serve humanity, Ser Alken. They are our gaolers.”

“You’re insane,” I said. “And I know better than to heed the words of the damned.”

Orson leaned back into the shadows, scoffing. “Why bother denying it? Your own brothers and sisters within the Table gave you this secret.”

I closed my eyes against a sudden onrush of memory. Ser Ghislaine, struggling to speak through his own scorched tongue, trying to see me even though his eyes had burned out of their sockets.

This had to be done. We had to be free. No one will understand… but this is but the first step.

“The Alder Knights knew the truth,” Orson reminded me. “They knew that it was their Queen and God who tangled the Wending Roads and closed the path to Onsolem all those centuries ago. She stranded us here, stranded our souls here. She abandoned and forsook us, and left that old elf to keep the way shut. She denied us Heaven.”

“I’m aware of the scripture,” I said impatiently. “This is the same thing the Church teaches us. The God-Queen closed the way to the divine realm because it fell to the Adversary.”

“Or did She close the way because this world is full of evil?” Orson tilted his head. “If the Heir could deny us Heaven, then why not also shut the way to Hell?”

I opened my mouth, but found no response. He wasn’t wrong. It didn’t make him right, but…

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“We know what happened because the Onsolain and the Sidhe were there. They’re our memory.”

“The same beings who have you murder those who threaten them?” Orson’s smile was derisive. “The same elves whose madness now infests the wilds like a spreading plague? The same immortal king who enslaved your order and lied to you?”

When he saw my face set, Orson leaned forward and the campfire’s light scattered the flesh from his skull, so a death’s head hissed the next words. “YES. You cannot deny that. Alicia and those loyal to her learned it. The Alder Table was not crafted by God as all are taught, but by the Archon himself. He chained you to that thing and scoured you with rules and strictures to control you. The champions of mortal man, made into a weapon for the elves… and they used it. Oh, they used it. For centuries the Alder Knights were the Archon’s tool to control the best of us. Only with the magi’s help were they able to free themselves from the web of illusions that bound their minds and turn their swords on their slaver.”

The words scorched the woods, the baron’s rage an almost tangible thing. The rest of the ghosts murmured, but they seemed muted now compared to this one spirit.

Orson leaned back, his human face returning. He showed me his spectral hands and spoke in a calmer voice. “You know all of this already. That demon told you — told you not only what Reynard and Alicia intended to do, but why they were doing it.”

“Demons lie.” My voice sounded distant.

“But she didn’t.” Orson’s voice hardened. “She betrayed a man who could rip her spirit to shreds, or bind it with agony that even the devils of Hell would find excessive. She trusted you with these secrets, hoping to be free of her enslavement. And what did you do?”

“Ran a blade through her heart!” One of the other ghosts snarled, curling through the branches above like a human faced serpent.

“She attacked me.”

“Few take rejection well,” Orson said sadly.

“Her shadow has been talking to all of you, hasn’t it?” I searched the night with my eyes, letting the aura in them burn hotter to see through the gloom. Yet, I didn’t spot the scadudemon. “Where is it?”

I was growing tired of that one. I’d waited too long to banish it.

Orson shook his head. “Lashing out at shadows will not change the truth.”

I bowed my head. “What do you want?”

“Me?” Orson laughed quietly. “I’m dead. Just a memory. A phantasm burned into the fabric of this world.”

The forest murmured around us.

“But you…”

He drew my attention back to him. “You, paladin, are a torch flame. The fire is diminished, true, but it still smolders in you. It draws the dead and other spirits lost in the darkness to you, like moths to a flame. You knew this and used it to slay your enemy. You used us. It was the same for that dhampir. She was drawn to that warmth just as we are.”

That was a step too far. “You don’t know anything about her. She’s not some… animal, driven by instinct.”

“Part of her very much is,” Orson said. “I do not blame her for it. It can be very cold, being dead.”

Catrin had seemed so at peace in my arms. Fidei had too, come to think of it. Had she been the same? Trying to warm herself at a campfire?

Had either of them really wanted me?

“It doesn’t matter. Even if that’s true, it doesn’t make her wicked. Everyone wants to be warm, to be loved.”

Orson’s smile was cruel and full of contempt. “If you believed that, you wouldn’t have smote the false priestess and sent her burning spirit hurtling down to Hell.”

“I’m tired of this,” I snapped. “What do you all want from me? Or is this just torment?”

Orson clasped his skeletal fingers together. “What we want is very simple, Ser Knight. We wish to escape this fate. You can be our guide, our lantern. It is your purpose, your destiny. The Table is broken, the Archon dead. You are all but free of those chains.”

He leaned close again. “You can guide us to Heaven.”

“None of you belong in Heaven,” I told him. Hatred boiled in my gut.

He shrugged. “Then you can lead us away from this. I can imagine few places worse than this… nothing.”

“I would rather burn in Hell than help you,” I told him.

Orson glared at me, his lips pressed tight. The forest muttered its discontent.

“You owe us,” he hissed at me. “You and those close to you would all be dead without us. And we are not going anywhere. We will haunt you to your death, Alken Hewer.”

His cruel voice softened. “But we can also give you power.”

“Power?” I asked against my better judgement.

“As your inner fire fades,” the ghost told me, “as the darkness creeps in, we surge forth to fill the space. We can be your doom… but we can also be your ally. There have been others among the True Knights who have fallen too, much more completely than you have. You can turn that guttering light which calls us into a weapon. Let us warm ourselves by this flame, and you can use us.”

My skin crawled as I realized what he was suggesting. “You’re talking about the Damnus.” I shook my head, my face twisting. “I will not become that. Those knights are a blight.”

“You’ve already taken the first step,” Orson said in a reasonable tone.

“Once. Never again.”

His smile was cold and mirthless. “Do not speak so soon. You’ve already felt it, haven’t you? Those of us you used before have adhered themselves to your soul’s fire. Already, the memory of your Sacred Arts fades to be replaced by our rancor. Learn to sharpen it into a blade… or let it devour you alive. Your choice.”

He stood then and took a step back, letting the woodland shadows swallow him. The rest of the ghosts seemed to fade. They did not all go, but their voices grew quieter, less insistent.

I waited a long time before I felt certain he’d actually gone. The silence he left was deafening.

Morgause nudged me with her snout and purred. I ran a hand along her neck, speaking in a low, soothing voice. “It’s alright. He’s just another bastard.”

I knew it was poison to heed the dead. And yet, everything the baron said held the ring of truth. I wondered if that was how the cleverest devils earned their marks.

One thing was for certain. I couldn’t ignore whatever had happened to me during my final confrontation with Yith. It needed to be dealt with, sooner than later.

Nothing to be done just then though, and I had other tasks to attend to. It would be a long, hard road to Tol. I didn’t know what I’d be getting into once I arrived. More than likely, that’s what the Choir intended. They’d keep me blind and focused until they were ready for me to know more.

To hell with that. I wanted to know what I’d be getting into, and there was one place I could find that information.

I just needed to keep off the main roads, and let myself get a bit lost.

Another day passed and night crept in again. I found myself on a scarcely traveled path that cut through a wood off the main road. I’d barely been able to make the trail out at first with it buried in snow, but I followed it for several hours. The woods seemed like a frozen cavern, with branches sporting icy fangs grown dense enough to obscure the sky.

Night had fallen an hour before. While both Morgause and I could see in the dark, I lit one of the alchemical lanterns I’d brought along and held it in my left hand. It looked like a small metal cage with a sphere inside, which I could adjust to produce an even radius of light or direct the beam one way. It lasted for hours and produced little heat and no smoke, another continental marvel that Lisette kept insisting wasn’t magic.

The woods were eerily quiet, devoid of even so much as a rustling breeze. Snow crunched under Morgause’s claws, but the only other sound to accompany us were my steady breaths.

I came to a crossroads. An old sign rose above it, all its boards broken and unreadable except for one that pointed at a shallow hill half hidden amid the trees. I could make out a faint pattern of lights spaced across the silhouette of a building atop that rise.

The inn was three stories plus an attic level, large and old, like a weathered mansion looming within the shadow of the winter bared trees. I could just barely make out the lettering on the single intact board on the crossroads sign. The Backroad Inn.

“Guess I’m still welcome,” I muttered to Morgause. She made a soft sound of unease and tossed her head. I patted her comfortingly, then fished a bronze coin out of a pouch at my belt and flicked it once. My eyes scanned the darkness opposite the glowing inn, which seemed to bear close and thick despite my night vision.

I could make out the gaunt faces and shifting, liquid shapes that lurked amid the trees. They watched me with expectant hunger, pleading and threatening all at once.

I turned my back on them and faced the building on the hill. I’d tried finding the phantasmal inn already in the city, but it seemed as though the Keeper had untethered his establishment from Garihelm. It’d been there for weeks during the summit, taking a host of customers from the packed capital.

But the migratory inn seemed to be back to its usual habit, floating across the edges of the material world and the Wend and picking up lone travelers who strayed from well trod paths.

Usually, one would have to be truly lost and stumble on the inn by accident, but if one had an invitation and was looking for it specifically the establishment had a habit of making an appearance. I wasn’t quite a regular, but I’d rarely had much trouble finding it when I wanted to.

I hadn’t tried for many months. Not since right after the tournament. I felt nervous, but pushed the feeling down.

I approached the front of the inn and dismounted in the yard. I hesitated. I’d never had a mount with me before. There was a stable, a big one, and even as I noted it the doors opened and a man hurried out. I didn’t recognize him, but guessed him to be one of the Backroad’s staff. I thought him old at first, but when he drew closer to my light I realized he was a young man made haggard by lack of sleep. His clothes were worn and dirty, his hair unkempt.

He reached for my steed’s reins, but flinched back when she bared her sharp teeth at him. The scadumare made no sound and didn’t nip, but the threat was obvious. I patted her on the neck and murmured a few quiet words, and she settled. The stableman took the reins with hesitation, and the chimera let him.

I pulled out some coins to pay the man, but he shook his head vigorously and moved toward the stables. Bemused, I turned back to the main building. The muffled din of conversation grew pronounced as I approached the front of the inn.

Someone waited by the door, half hidden in the shadows where the dusty old lantern hanging above the entrance didn’t illuminate. They stepped forward, revealing a slim, pretty woman with black hair. She stared at me with pale brown eyes that almost shone in the night, reminding me distinctly of a wolf’s.

I paused when she stepped forward. The woman wore a blue dress, carried no weapons, and probably weighed less than half of what I did even without my armor. She also didn’t block the way, yet something told me not to get any closer. An instinct, one strengthened by my knowledge of who exactly this was.

“Alken.” The woman smiled at me, revealing sharp canines and dimples. “It has been some time.”

She spoke in an odd accent, something that sounded foreign but might not have been. Urn has many dialects and accents which mostly originate from across the wider world. We are a land of migrants, so it can be hard to tell what is actually foreign or just some insular speech from a corner of the subcontinent I hadn’t visited.

The familiar way she used my name threw me off. We’d never actually spoken, though I’d met her twice before.

“Saska,” I greeted her. “Were you waiting for me?”

She gave a slight shake of her head. “I’m afraid you were not expected. You know that one of my habits is to protect this place from interlopers, yes?”

I held up a hand. “I’m not here for trouble.”

Saska shook her head again, making her unbraided hair swing back and forth. “I have no intention of barring your entry, dear boy. You are welcome so long as you bring no violence and do not come to us as a pauper.”

Her smile widened. “In truth, we also welcome the paupers. They simply pay in other ways.”

I felt a cold prickle along the back of my spine that had nothing to do with the winter air. I glanced back into the night, trying to see into the black woods beyond the inn’s front yard again.

“Is someone out there?” I asked quietly.

Saska never lost her smile. “Besides the unquiet spirits you brought with you?” She laughed quietly. “Tis’ no matter. Just forest ghosts and other scavengers. Take your ease inside and do not fret about it.”

I definitely would fret about it. I’d never known the Keeper to post a guard, not outside at least. “I didn’t plan to stay the night,” I told the woman.

Saska shrugged and said nothing. Unsettled, I moved past her and stepped into the Backroad.