Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

I found Rysanthe inside the Fane’s temple shrine. Dusk had fallen, and the encroaching night awoke the sacred pools. They shone dimly with a silver lambency, yet only served to make the edges of the shrine darker — as though they ate the light rather than gave it.

The second Doomsman, or more precisely the first, stood with her back to me as I passed through the pillars, so I only saw a dim, sharp silhouette, the impression of white hair sewn with bones. A rod of dark iron hung from the right side of her hip. Rysanthe Miresgal, Silberdaughter, Moonsbane, Death to the Deathless, turned to face me cast in pale witch light and shadow.

The drow elf was a slight thing, showed pleasant dimples when she smiled, and had a kind voice with just the barest hint of laughter in it. “Alken. It is good to see you well.”

I stopped near the first of the pools. They were spread irregularly through the interior of the open-air temple, reflecting one of the more ill-omened constellations. “I’d started to think you’d be in the Underworld until spring,” I said.

“I have not been in Draubard,” she told me, beginning to skirt lightly around one of the pools. Like Oraeka, she wore light garments despite the freezing weather. Her outfit had rarely deviated since I’d met her, consisting of a short dress of pale blue-green silk belted around the waist and shoulders with decorative motifs of silver and ivory. Her sandaled feet crossed one in front of the other with each step, as though she balanced on a narrow beam.

I frowned. “I thought you’d been called away for some mission for the Silver Council?”

She nodded, finally stopping just out of arms reach of me. “True,” she said vaguely, glancing down at one of the pools. Her reflection in the water had transparent skin, showing pale bones beneath dimly glowing like hot iron. I peeled my eyes off that unsettling sight.

“I have been in the north,” she said at last, closing her rose-violet eyes and breathing in as though inhaling the most pleasant of scents. I knew, then, that true night had fallen. “Attending to… unpleasant matters. This winter has been rife with profane necromancy and wild behavior among the untethered dead. My brand has been used too frequently of late.” She placed a hand on the iron rod at her hip.

The north again. “You look tired,” I said, inwardly wincing at the irony of being the one to say it. However, I couldn’t ignore how dim the faerie light around the elf looked. She seemed almost mortal.

“I will recover,” she said, enunciating each word. “But yes, it has been a difficult season. I battled a ravenmother in Lindenroad for several weeks. She was on the cusp of lichdom.”

I shuddered. “I might have been able to help, if you’d called.”

She cast a thankful smile at me. “I know, my friend, but you have your own responsibilities. The ghosts whisper to me that the Headsman has taken on a disciple?”

I nodded. Emma had returned to the cabin on the hill, still angry at me. I regretted losing my temper — not a good look, for the one who was supposed to be the older and wiser in our odd duo. I’d gotten used to my darker moods having no audience other than trackless wilderness and mad ghosts.

Rysanthe listened a while as I told her of Emma, and of most everything she’d missed over the past season. I told her about Venturmoor, House Hunting, Emma’s training in the Fane over the winter months, and about Billensbrooke. I left out my trip to the Backroad, knowing she wouldn’t approve. When done, the moons had risen high into the night sky. I felt the bite of the cold, even despite the aureflame in me, but I endured it.

“And where is this child born of Light and Shadow?” Rysanthe asked, tilting to one side to look past me as though searching for someone lurking in the background. “Don’t tell me you’ve scared her off with wild tales about me.”

As if I need to tell tall tales to make you seem scary, I thought wryly. Aloud I said, “She’s retired for the day.”

Rysanthe must have detected something in my tone. “You two quarreled?”

I scratched at the stubble on my chin — I’d shaved after Cat had made her offhand comment about my growing beard — and considered deflecting. Then, deciding there wasn’t any harm in it, I told the elder Doomsman about my argument with my apprentice.

“I have been a bit… surly, I guess.” I made the admission with a grumble even I heard. “Still, she’s been raised the lady of a manor. She expects everyone to kowtow to her, and she speaks her mind too readily. They’re bad habits.”

“And they vex you,” Rysanthe observed. “You lost your temper.”

She didn’t quite have any criticism in her voice, but I heard it anyway. I scoffed and folded my arms. “Yeah, I suppose.”

“I can see it in your eyes,” the elf mused. “You have always been dark in your moods, my friend, but there is a weight on your soul which is heavy of late.”

I almost reached for the medallion hidden under my shirt — a very real weight — but disguised the motion by massaging at the bridge of my nose. “Not you too, Rys. Please.”

She gave me a wistful smile. “Very well. On to other matters then.” Her eyes drifted down to the pool beneath her, her silver eyelashes drooping heavy in thought. The inhumanly beautiful frame of her face set into troubled lines.

“The Inquisition.” She said the name with a sense of weight heavy as Caim’s hammer. “I have heard troubling things on the wind, seen evil signs… I still remember the original. There were many mad ghosts in those days, twisted by breaking wheels and iron maidens.”

“Have you seen the sign I described?” I asked her. “The Trident?”

She shook her head. “I have rarely strayed close to civilization, save the occasional rural village. This land is becoming more distrustful of the Sidhe by the year, both toward my people Below and our cousins Above. On that topic, I hear you saw Princess Maerlys recently?”

I nodded, folding my arms. “She is… very different than she used to be.”

Rysanthe nodded. “So I have heard. There was a time, long ago in my youth, when all the Sidhe were feared and reviled as monsters. Many of us were, to humans at least, for all intents and purposes.” She sighed and turned her eyes up to the sky. “I hope we are not returning to that, but who can say?”

“I never learned what happened at Billensbrooke,” I told her. “With the grave robbings, the warning you received, or why the Church or whoever it was emptied the place out.”

She spread her hands out in a nonplussed shrug, a very ordinary gesture for the old elf. “Many places have had such strangeness across the land. We will not always be able to make a difference. We can only bring Doom to those deserving, and leave the rest to settle in the tides.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed, or perhaps just didn’t want to agree, but I kept my peace. “How long will you be staying this time?”

She held her narrow chin a moment in thought. “Until the Dead begin to call once more. I think it will not be long. And you?”

“Until the snows melt,” I said. “Or until I’m called.”

I’d tried to chase down more information about the revelations Karog had provided, but there was only so much I could do confined to the Fane and its surrounds. I planned to visit the Backroad again within the next few weeks and talk to Cat, who no doubt heard more than I did from the ghostly inn’s patrons. In the meantime, I listened to the tidings of stray spirits, kept myself sharp with regular training, aided Oraeka with the sanctuary’s upkeep, and waited.

Always waiting.

“There is something else.”

I avoided Rysanthe’s eyes as she cast the question out. She could see through lies and misdirection as keenly as I could, with her death-blessed eyes — possibly even better. Part of me didn’t want to tell her, irrationally, preferring to keep it to myself.

But it would be foolish to. I nodded. “I think there’s something wrong with your ring.”

She frowned, though I didn’t sense any pride in the expression. “How so?”

“A few weeks back,” I said, “before Billensbrooke, I had a dream… a nightmare. I was still wearing the ring when I woke in the morning.”

Tilting her head to one side, so her braid hung loose down one shoulder, the drow held out a hand. “Give it here.”

I slipped the ring off my finger and handed it to her. She inspected it a while, turning it this way and that, even sniffing it. Finally, she held it up to the moonlight so the black stone showed clear. Even lit, it cast no reflection.

“I will cleanse it,” she said uncertainly, “but I can’t sense anything wrong. The curse I placed on it is still strong, and no other magic has overridden it. Tell me about this dream.”

I hesitated, something the elf didn’t miss. “Alken,” she said, her tone turning serious. “None of your secrets will leave my lips. I cannot help you if I cannot discern what has caused this anomaly.”

Even still, it took me a while to work myself up to it. Finally I said, “I didn’t realize I slept at first. I was staring into a fire in the woods south of here, and then… I heard a voice. A demon’s voice, one I… one I fought when Elfhome fell. One I killed.”

Rysanthe canted her head to one side, her gaze running along my features before lingering on my left eye. “The one who marked you?”

I turned away on reflex, letting my uncombed hair cover the scars over the left side of my face. “Yes.”

“Hm.” The elf pressed the tips of her fingers together, taking a step closer to me. She was much shorter, her nose barely reaching my lowest rib. “The Abgrûdai are like my kind in many ways, Alken. They cannot truly be killed, only banished back to the Abyss, changed, disassembled, reduced to the dregs of a spirit… but their presence is not easily expunged. You were marked during the Fall, and wounds left by demons do not heal clean, if they heal at all.”

“So you’re saying I’ll always be like this?” I asked. I studied my own scarred, tired reflection in the water. “Damaged?”

“We are all scarred,” Rysanthe said, not unkindly. “It is part of living. But the borders between worlds, even realities, are rarely ironclad. The Wend might be tangled, but it is full of holes. Perhaps some piece of this old enemy has lingered with you, in which case its power is only so great as you allow it… or perhaps it reaches out from Damnation, a distant call faintly heard. Either way, it cannot harm you. It is dead, or as good as.”

She placed a cold hand on my arm. “It is just a ghost. Like any other, you must simply not heed it.”

I turned toward the temple’s exit, pulling away from her touch. She didn’t understand. No one did, or could. “Easier said than done. This one knows me too well.” I paused before I left and turned back. “You should make one of these for Ser Maxim.” I held up the ring.

Rysanthe shook her head, frowning. “No, Alken. You remember the last time, when you let him borrow yours? This is no boon, this thing. I gave it to you only because the danger the spirits beyond these woods pose is greater. I told you before — I craft curses. This dream-eating ring is a curse, however it might shield you from worse things.”

“So there’s nothing that can be done for him?”

“He will heal in time,” the elf said, though her features reflected my own troubled thoughts. “The fire in him will fade away, so long as he doesn’t stoke it. He must be the one to make that choice.” Her violet eyes, near magenta in the moonlight, returned to me. “I would council you to do the same.”

I turned back to the door. “My war isn’t done, Rysanthe. I can’t afford to throw away weapons.”

***

A storm blew in that night. It began subtly, as a creaking in the frozen trees, then escalated to a distant whistling wind.

By the next afternoon, the forest howled. Cutting wind drove an unceasing torrent of frost over the Fane, veiling everything in angry white. Snow piled high, drowning the creeks and paths, weighing the boughs of the trees down in ice.

Inside Maxim’s cottage, the crackling fire blazed hot in the hearth. The wisps inside it fought doggedly against the cold, and Emma helped them with fresh logs and the occasional prod of the iron poker. Maxim sat at his desk, carving some new abstraction, while I worked with needle and thread to repair my worn clothes.

None of us spoke, listening only to the storm and our own inner voices.

“Are you sure Oraeka and Lady Rysanthe will be alright?” Emma asked suddenly, breaking the silence. She knelt by the hearth, one arm propped on a knee. “Might be crowded in here, but surely it’s better than sleeping out in that.” She waved a hand to the walls, and the howling wind beyond.

She’d directed the question at Ser Maxim. She’d barely said two words to me since our argument the day before. The old knight grunted and spoke without turning.

“Elves.” He said the word almost as a curse. “Oraeka has her own shelters, probably warmer than ours. As for the nymph… she’s probably out there in it, dancing naked in the wind.”

Emma blushed. “Ah. Still, this is a bad storm. How long do you think it will last?”

“Who can say?” Maxim muttered, lifting his latest work up to the lamp he’d hung on the wall. He’d carved a hooded figure this time, a priest or mage perhaps, its robes twisted at the top and bottom so it seemed almost trapped inside its own garments. It looked disturbingly familiar, but I couldn’t say how.

“I remember one winter like this,” Ser Maxim grumbled, placing his carving back down on the desk and drumming the fingers of his other hand against the wood. “Old Wicked sent it all the way from his fortresses in the west, across the Oroion Sea and the vastness of Edaea. He’s never forgotten his hatred for our God-Queen, the withered imp. He put his minions in it…”

Maxim glanced at me. “You hadn’t joined us yet. This was, oh…” he ran a hand through his mass of beard. “Fifty years back? The blizzard lasted weeks, and it had gorcrows and bone beasts in it.”

I looked up from my sewing. “I’ve heard of that.”

Maxim nodded, smiling grimly. “They called it the Widow’s Winter. We had a few seats unfilled come spring.”

“This storm didn’t come from Antriss,” I said. “You taught me what that smells like, Maxim.”

The old knight grunted. “This isn’t a westerly wind, true. It’s more like—”

He froze. I felt it at the same time. Maxim spat out a curse and stood, knocking his chair back as he did.

Emma shot to her feet, clutching the iron poker like a sword. The wisps, panicked by the change in mood, made the hearth fire swirl briefly. “What is it?” She asked, looking between us.

“There’s something in the storm,” I said. “Grab your sword.”

Her face paler than usual, Emma went to the second of the two beds in the cottage — Maxim had fashioned it for her, half just for a project to do. She pulled a trunk out from beneath it, taking her sword and chainmail shirt from inside. She began to arm herself.

Maxim pulled his own sword out from beneath his bed, a heavy arm with a cross hilt, still full of artistry even after a lifetime of use.

“What is it?” Emma asked, casting a worried look to the door. I busied myself sliding into my own hauberk, much longer and heavier than her armor. I forwent the vambraces and spaulders I normally wore in addition, settling for lacing on my steel-plated boots.

I steadied my breathing, giving my heart time to settle as I’d been trained. I couldn’t listen to the world if I was so full of noise inside. I saw Maxim doing the same, his eyes nearly closing as he tried discerning the sense of wrongness we’d both felt.

“Could be an Onsolain taking shape in the land nearby,” Maxim said, his gray eyes still distant. “Or a very old Sidhe.”

I understood why he thought so. The feeling I had from the storm was difficult to describe — it always is, with our powers. They’re too full of abstraction and poetic aestheticism, which makes it damn difficult to get any practical, clear cut answers.

It felt like a giant, a true one, striding across the land. I imagined the wind altering its course for that titan disturbance, eddies and swirls created by its every step or idle swing of an arm. I imagined trees whispering in fear of being crushed, animals cowering in their hidden dens. I imagined the hills rippling like disturbed water.

Didn’t necessarily mean something literally huge was out there — only something very, very dangerous.

“If it’s one of the Choir,” I said slowly, “it might be here for me.”

“And if it’s something else,” Maxim growled, “you shouldn’t face it alone. I can still wield a sword.”

“A sword might not do anything for us here,” I told him. “And your powers are unstable.”

Maxim’s expression darkened. “I am not broken. I can fight.”

I grabbed my cloak, the one Nath had given me as a reward for doing her bidding in Venturmoor. It coiled around my shoulders almost of its own accord, as though eager to be worn, wrapping about my neck nearly up to the chin. I turned to face the paladin. When had he started looking so thin, so stooped?

“If something attacks the Fane, they will need you.” I placed a hand on his shoulder. “I’m the vanguard, Max.”

To my relief, he relaxed some. “This is foolish. It might just pass us by.”

“I’m not going to trust my luck.” I grabbed my axe from where it hung on the wall. As I turned to the door, I found Emma waiting for me with her armor on, her Carreon sword belted at her hip, her winter coat hanging down to her knees.

“You’re staying too,” I said.

Emma’s lips curled into a sneer. “I am most certainly not. Haven’t we already had this talk? I’m not going to slow you down. I’m coming with.”

“This isn’t about trying to keep you from harm,” I said, feeling more weariness than annoyance. “I have aureflame to keep me from freezing to death. You don’t.”

I brushed past her. “Stay inside. I’ll be back soon.”

That logic got through to her, thank the stars. With a bitter curse, she stepped away from the door. I propped my axe on my shoulder, my mind already turning to what lay beyond the cottage walls.

“Alken.”

I paused with my hand on the door latch, glancing back at the girl. Her lips had pressed into a twisted line, and her eyes looked more troubled than angry. “You had better come back. I’m a warlock, remember? I’ll drag your ghost back from whatever god or devil tries to take it, if I have to.”

I scoffed, but felt the smallest of smiles touch the corner of my mouth. “And be your minion? No thanks.”

“I’ll have you carry all my things,” she said thoughtfully. “And deliver doomful portents to my enemies. Maybe I’ll have you wear a silly hat.”

I shuddered. “I’ll be back,” I said more assuredly. Then, before I could hear more about whatever demeaning fate awaited me at my own apprentice’s hands, I went out into the storm.

***

The wind hit me like a physical thing, like a god’s angry shout. Though I’d been able to hear it inside the cottage, the sudden change from hearing the storm’s fury muted to feeling it full force disoriented me. I managed to get the door closed after nearly being knocked down, then turned into the storm.

I closed my eyes against the scalding cold wind, against the thousands of tiny flecks of ice trying to embed themselves in my skin. I found that core of sacred flame in me, and with a whisper eaten by the howling wind I let it surge forth. I lifted my axe, and amber fire flickered to life across the faerie alloy. A pale but solid golden light spread out from the crescent-moon blade, extending to about ten feet in every direction.

The storm didn’t abate, but it flowed around that sphere of light I’d summoned. I began trudging forward through the knee-deep snow, keeping my axe aloft like a torch in a dark cave. I felt the wind’s bite, but the aureflame in me would prevent me from freezing.

However, I felt less certain it would keep whatever lurked in the storm from ripping me into so many bloody pieces.

I was a fool to go alone, I knew, but I’d spoken the truth when I’d warned Emma about the deadly cold. Maxim could have endured it, but I didn’t want to risk putting him in a situation where he might have to use his maimed powers.

All very reasonable. All very likely to get me killed out in the wilderness where no one would find me for days.

Navigating a blizzard is next to impossible. It’s all too common for a man to die of exposure within a dozen feet of his front door, with no idea how close he’d been to safety. The disorienting sound, the veil of white, the buffeting wind throwing your steps off course, it can all lead to a single grim conclusion.

But I don’t use only the senses all humans share. I hear the land itself, through my connection to the unseen roots of the Great Aldertree from which my order had been hewn. A presence lurked in the storm, and all I had to do was listen to the wind, feel the bite of the cold, and I would be drawn to it.

So I walked. I felt. I listened. I wandered deep into the woods below the cabin. I trod over the frozen stream where I’d spoken to Rysanthe the past fall, and beyond the wall of singing webs woven by the Cant Spiders.

It wasn’t long before I knew, instinctively, I was being watched. Whatever lurked in the snow and wind observed my steps. It had stopped, I felt, and waited for me.

I tightened my grip on Faen Orgis and found my battle calm. I am gilded steel. I am blessed iron, clean and sharp as Day’s rays. Though I clad myself in Gold, I cut through the mire. I am the thorn upon the bough.

Then, as the Alder mantra stoked the aureflame in me, my mind conjured the words of another, older oath, sworn the day my queen had tapped my shoulders with her sword and made me a knight.

Do you swear to see to the end any course begun?

“I do,” I whispered into the wind.

And the storm broke. I found myself standing at the edge of a clearing encircled by gray, frozen trees. In the middle of that clearing stood a figure clad all in black.

He wore a long coat over a rich tunic, his high boots buckled just below the knee. Fine leather gloves darkened hands half hidden below trailing sleeves of an odd cut, and a high collar encased a neck wrapped in a woolen scarf. Rather than a hat or hood, his head was shrouded by an elaborate wrap of deep blues and blacks, studded with green and red gemstones. Some of that headwear wound over the right side of his face, covering one eye. Precious gems and fine metals decorated the outfit, bright against the blacks and grays, so he looked a man-shaped constellation.

In his left hand he held a tall staff, a smooth length of ebony wood widening into a blunt wedge at the top. A long nail had been driven into the staff’s head at an angle.

The figure wasn’t very tall — a few inches under six feet, given a bit more height by the fine boots and headwrap. He lifted his one visible eye to me. It glinted like polished obsidian, mirror-bright and full of secrets.

I knew what he was, and I knew him to be dangerous. The staff was a giveaway — it practically blazed with auratic power, though it had nothing on the man himself. To my golden eyes, it felt like staring into the face of a dark sun. I knew this man had summoned the blizzard, as easily as he’d dismissed it a moment before. Such powers were part and parcel for his kind.

I stood before one of the Magi, and possibly one of the five most dangerous beings in all of Urn.

A man I knew to be as ruthless as he was ambitious.

A man I hadn’t spoken to in the better part of a decade.

A man I wasn’t certain I’d ever see again.

The wizard spread out his hands, letting the draping sleeves of his coat fall to either side like crow wings. He flashed a full set of bright teeth in a wide smile.

“Alken! It’s been too long.”

I sighed, and loosened my grip on the axe. “Lias.”