Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

The marions closed in on us, clicking and rattling like huge insects of brass and wood. Their eyeless faces seemed disturbingly aware, and the sounds they made were almost communicative, like they coordinated amongst themselves with some abstracted language. Most hung suspended in the air as though on unseen strings.

I suspected those strings were Lias’s power, some Art used to grant his puppets greater mobility. I felt Emma at my back as a concentration of heat and nerves, knew she was afraid and doing her best to control it.

I’d brought her into this.

I’d faced marions before. They came in all sorts of forms, and were animated through various means. Some used Art, while others bound the shades of the dead into constructs, using necromancy to animate them. Sometimes they acted as vessels for willing fey spirits, not unlike how gargoyles gained life. They could be made out of metal, out of rope and wood, or even sackcloth and straw. Anything capable of locomotion would serve.

The Church had enforced stricter laws about them after Lyda’s Plague, when the Old Inquisition had used them as instruments of capture and torture, but they’d persisted in various forms despite the taboo. The Recusants had fielded whole platoons of them during the war, using them as shock troops and assassins.

They were deadly foes. Fearless, spider-fast, difficult to destroy. Their complex frames could hide any number of lethal weapons, from blades to noxious alchemical fumes.

But my attention went past the dolls, to the will behind them. Some pieces began to settle into place in my mind.

When I’d arrived in the city, I’d had to deliberately track Lias down in order to speak to him directly. He’d set me to work with little explanation or preparation, hidden his own schemes and circumstances, even his whereabouts. He’d acted through proxies and liaisons. At the time, it had made sense — it had annoyed me, but I thought I understood the reasons.

A very different picture formed before me now. Had he really trusted me so little? Had he believed that I’d side with Rosanna if I’d known about their feud? It must have seemed to him like I had. Even still, this seemed like a very extreme response, if he believed I’d come to take him into custody.

Something still seemed off. The pieces didn’t all add up.

But if I was wrong…

“Emma,” I said.

“Is now really the time?” She hissed. The marions hadn’t advanced, remaining in their uneven ranks around and above us, ready to close in the second the wizard gave the command. I could imagine it — the flash of movement, the dogpile, the slashing, stabbing blades. A quick and gruesome death.

“Sheath your steel,” I said quietly.

A moment passed before an incredulous answer came. “What?”

“Put the sword away,” I ordered, keeping my attention on the constructs. “Trust me.”

“It’s not that I don’t, but…” She hesitated, and I didn’t blame her. If I was wrong, we’d both die.

I lifted my axe horizontally, showing it to the marions and their hidden master. “Lias,” I said, putting some of the commanding tone I’d used before back into my voice. “You and I have risked our lives for one another countless times. You are my brother.”

You are my friend, Alken, like my own brother. You always will be.

Rose’s words had cut deep through the cynicism and sense of loss I’d let stalk me through the past decade. Perhaps it had come time to spread some of that around.

“I won’t fight you.” I hurled the axe into the floor, where it embedded itself with a resounding crack!

I could almost feel Emma’s shock. I only took a deep breath and waited. If I’d misjudged Lias, if his paranoia and ruthlessness had truly gone beyond the pale, then we’d die badly.

The manikin faces stared at me, impassive, unfeeling. My heart pounded in my chest. Behind me, I heard Emma spit out a curse and sheathe her sword.

A long silence. A bead of sweat made a lazy trail down my temple, finding its way to my jaw before dripping to the floor.

The room twisted. I felt a crushing sense of weightlessness followed by a thrill of vertigo as the perforated walls and helix stairs blurred and spun. A high pitched whine found my ears, growing louder, louder—

With an odd pop, reality righted itself. I stood in a very different room, much less ostentatious than the first. It looked like a study and laboratory fused into some chimeric mutant, with high shelves piled with books and scrolls, tables scattered haphazardly about, and an array of nameless apparatus’s.

I glanced around, every muscle in my body tense with nerves. Emma was nowhere in sight. Neither were the marions. The corners of the wide room were very dark.

“That was very foolish,” an annoyed voice said from behind me.

I turned to see Lias about ten feet away. He sat on a high backed chair, dressed in a black tunic and breeches studded with silver. He looked terrible. His one visible eye — a strip of cloth hid the other — looked sunken, ringed in dark lines, and he hadn’t combed his hair or shaved in many days. I could even make out some streaks of gray in his hair I hadn’t noticed before, or been allowed to notice.

He had his staff, a long length of smooth ebony wood with a wedge-shaped head run through with an iron nail, propped against the chair. He glowered at me, his posture hunched.

“Where’s my squire?” I demanded without preamble.

“Safe,” Lias said. His voice sounded hoarse. “I called off the guardians.” He tilted his head to one side, peering at me with his bright green eye. “You cut your hair.”

I didn’t have any patience for small talk in that moment. “What the hell is all of this, Li? Would you actually have killed me in that room?”

He thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. “I would have subdued you both, and kept you secure until I found another solution.”

He trailed off, but sighed when I didn’t drop my glare. I had no intention of letting him dodge an explanation.

“I didn’t know what Rose has been telling you,” he said, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands over his knees. I saw no apology in his gaze, only weariness and appraisal. “I acted to protect myself. Besides, I meant what I said. I shouldn’t have involved you in all of this. I see that now.”

“So that’s it, then?” I forced myself to sound calm. “After everything, you just tell me I’m not needed anymore?”

Lias shrugged. “I admit, I was short on options when I sought you out. I didn’t expect Rosanna to react so dramatically to my methods.”

“Methods?” I snapped, no longer bothering with calm. “Li, you were assassinating nobles without her leave, terrorizing her subjects.”

“Markham Forger’s subjects,” Lias said dismissively. “This isn’t Karles. They might call her Empress, but make no mistake — Rosanna is a foreign queen with a nominal role here. She is surrounded by enemies, and it is King Markham who is truly in charge.”

More forcefully he added, “I sought to protect her. She could not afford to look weak.”

I took a deep breath. “You’re right,” I said.

Lias blinked. “Come again?”

“You’re right,” I said, letting a hard edge creep into my words. “This isn’t the Karledale. This isn’t one kingdom, Li, it’s all of them. You and I might have used fear and force to cow the nobles back in the south, but Rose is trying to build something with the Accord.”

The faces of my queen’s young sons flashed through my mind, and strengthened my resolve. “We did things a certain way when we were young, and we had good reasons, but Rosanna can’t be a tyrant here. She’s trying to build peace, to bring the lords together. I’ve seen that well enough these past weeks.”

Lias’s expression had turned sour, but he didn’t interrupt.

“I’ve never had a good head for politics,” I continued. “Probably, you knew things I didn’t, had your reasons… But whatever the case, you left Rose without her left hand.”

I stared down at my own hand, empty still from my willing disarmament. “Just like I left her without her right. I was counting on you to look out for her, not chase your own ambitions.”

Lias began to protest. “I wasn’t—”

“The Riven Order,” I said, interrupting him. I met his eye, making sure the piercing aura in mine found him directly. Even one of the Magi would struggle to lie under an Alder Knight’s gaze. “You knew about it, didn’t you? What it meant, and what breaking it would do. I know you encouraged Markham to lift the trade ban with Edaea, and a wizard wouldn’t be ignorant about the consequences.”

I watched the color drain from my old friend’s face. He averted his gaze, hunching. “I had my reasons,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.

I nodded. “I would hear them.”

Heat returned to Lias’s voice, and he stood in a flash, pressing a hand to his thin chest. “I need not explain it!” He snapped. “You’ve seen it!”

I frowned at him, and in a flurry of frustrated motion the wizard made a quick series of gestures. Once again the world twisted in on itself, space warping, and I felt a gust of cool wind on my face. We stood on a tower near the edge of the city, overlooking its sprawl. We stood above a great harbor. Ships of myriad design and origins filled it, hundreds of them.

The scene changed again, this time to a grand hall filled with seats. A large crowd listened to a man give a lecture, the topic so abstract I couldn’t discern what he spoke of exactly. It looked like any preoster giving a sermon, but the man didn’t speak of faith or God.

The scene changed again, to a group of nobles watching a sculptor tease a shape out of a slab of marble large as a building. Then again, to a physiker healing refugees on the streets with medicine rather than sorcery or prayer. Then again, to a workshop of sorts where books were being printed with the aid of huge devices rather than being painstakingly copied by the hands of scribes.

Lias’s spell brought us to an orchestra, where music of a complexity I’d never hard before played from myriad instruments, all given cohesion by the swipes of a wand held in the hand of a man who very much looked like a magus, though I sensed no Art in his motions, only exactness.

Then, with teeth-jarring abruptness, we were back in the study.

“Don’t you see?” Lias said, after giving me a moment to absorb what I’d witnessed. “You’ve been seeing it. Renaissance.” He said the word like a prayer. “Our world is changing, Alken. It has been changing for a very long time. Certain powers in this land — the Church, the elves, and others — have been keeping us locked in a dark age for centuries. We had grown stagnant!”

The wizard started pacing, a manic edge taking over his furtive motions and heated words.

“We’ve convinced ourselves for so long of the superiority of our society, looking at the outside world as a place of madness and barbarism. But it simply isn’t true! We are the barbarians. The printing press was invented in Bantes nearly half a century ago. Do you have any idea how significant that one thing is? And the rest of it, ah!”

He whirled on me, making clawing gestures with his hands. “Art, music, medicine, advances in science and philosphy… Urn used to be the center of the cultured world, but we let dogma and paranoia drive us into seclusion. I changed that.”

He bared his teeth, jabbing the fingers of his left hand into his chest. “So yes, I knew very well what I was doing!”

I had to look away from the gleam of mania in the man’s remaining eye. I concentrated on what I’d just witnessed, and what I’d been seeing ever since I’d made my return to civilization. Hadn’t I thought the same thing only earlier that day? Not all the changes brought by the new trade were bad.

I took a steadying breath. “And what about the lord you murdered in his own garden? The one they found strangled by statues?”

Silence. I glanced at Lias, seeing the hard set to his jaw.

“Change requires sacrifice,” he said coldly. “Are you really going to lecture me after what you’ve done, Headsman?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Maybe you’re right. I’ve done some ugly things.” I flexed the fingers of my right hand.

“Then you understand,” Lias said, sighing.

“Was the earl you killed a murderer?” I asked quietly. “A tyrant? A diabolist? Did you find out he’d been abusing serving girls, or plotting to assassinate other leaders?”

I turned to face him. “Or was he just in your way? There is a difference, Lias. The Headsman carries out sentences. I won’t pretend like I think it’s a just role, but I’ve never taken a life for my own power.”

The wizard’s glare returned, but he couldn’t meet my eyes. “Always the good soldier, is it?”

“I’m a terrible soldier,” I said. “I’m always questioning everything.”

Lias scoffed. “I will not apologize to you.”

I nodded. “I put myself in the Priory’s custody from my own recklessness. It wasn’t your responsibility to bail me out.”

“That’s not—” Lias started, blanching. I’d struck a nerve. He grit his teeth and clutched his staff tighter, almost as a crutch. “I was going to break you free,” he muttered, without looking at me. “Rosanna just moved quicker.”

I took that in, and felt calmer. “I believe you,” I said.

“I will not go crawling back to her,” Lias said bitterly. “She humiliated me. She let that bull-headed husband of hers banish me from his court.”

I shrugged. “I told you, I’m not here on Rose’s orders. Not directly, anyway. I just want the boy.”

He studied me a moment, then his shoulders slumped. “You’re telling the truth.”

I laughed softly. “You really believed I was here to drag you back?”

“For interfering with your hunt?” Lias asked, lifting an eyebrow. “For taking the boy, and for leaving you to rot for weeks in the priorguard dungeons? Yes, I imagined you would be wroth.”

There was more to it, I could tell. Lias looked nearly as bad as I felt. I didn’t think he’d slept in some time, or bathed. He had a harrowed look in his one visible eye, almost haunted.

“I want my apprentice back,” I told him firmly. “And then I want to talk to Kieran. After that… You and I will have a longer conversation.”

Lias remained quiet a moment, his expression thoughtful. He nodded, and waved a hand distractedly. A door creaked open along one wall, and he pointed a gloved finger toward it.

“You will find the girl through there. As for the boy, I have him in a safe place. I will let you speak with him. I’ve not managed to get much of use, but I know you golden-eyed paladins have your ways.”

I nodded, turning, then paused as a dark thought came to me. “You didn’t try to compel him, did you? If you used any necromancy on him…”

“I came close,” Lias said, sounding very tired. “But no, I didn’t harm him.”

I closed my eyes, relieved. “Good.”

I confirmed Emma was alive and unscathed, then spent a good half hour convincing her not to murder the wizard. It took some doing, but I got her to calm down eventually. Even still, I left her to stand watch while I spoke to Kieran. Something told me I would need as much calm in the room as possible for that conversation.

Emma had retrieved my axe — she truly could be a blessing — and I sheathed it beneath my cloak as I went to my next meeting. Lias had placed Kieran into a small room, with a single chair and few other commodities. Undead as he was, the boy hadn’t needed anything like food or a chamberpot.

I opened the door and caught him mid-pace. He’d cleaned up, as best he could — Lias had provided him clean clothes, and even tended to some of his injuries.

The former dye maker’s apprentice still looked like the sort of carcass you wouldn’t even bother tossing on a cart. He’d lost an entire arm since I’d last seen him, cinching his shirt like an amputee, and I could make out perforations and cavernous gaps in his flesh showing hollow spaces where organs had once been. He stared at me with one empty socket and one ice-blue eye.

Worse, the subtle effect of phantasm had grown more pronounced around some of his worst injuries — his od had grown more solid, fixing itself more firmly to the ruined body. A bad sign.

“You!” Kieran pressed himself against the far wall, going on guard.

I stepped inside the room, leaving the door open at my back. Kieran noted that with a glance. I watched the confusion form on his pallid features, the distrust.

The room had a sharp chill, probably to help stall the dyghoul’s decay. It did little for the smell. A window sat high on one wall, letting in a beam of daylight. I studied it a moment, and felt certain after a brief inspection — false. Some magic of the arcane sanctum.

“I told you,” I said, turning my gaze to the apprentice, “to wait for me last night.”

Kieran set his face into a determined mask. I took it as a good sign, that he still bothered with human expressions. “I couldn’t stay near Laessa,” he said. “I put her at risk.”

I nodded. “A worthy thought, if I could believe it. She told you to run, didn’t she?”

Kieran started. “No, she—”

“Boy,” I said, hardening my voice. “I found you in a private place only you and she were familiar with. I don’t think you’d have gone to the island graveyard if the two of you hadn’t agreed to meet up.”

His ghoulish face couldn’t get any paler, but I saw the horror dawn on it. “If you’ve hurt her…” He began.

“She’s safe, and well. Much safer than you are.” I stepped further into the room, clearing the doorway so I didn’t stand between him and it. If he tried to run, he wouldn’t get far in Lias’s own playground. Still, the message needed to be clear — I meant him no harm.

“Who are you?” He asked me, focusing his attention on me instead of the route of escape.

Unlike Lady Laessa, Kieran was no noble. He had no ties to the aristocracy or a direct line to Rosanna’s faction. I didn’t feel any need to give him crumbs. “I’ve been contracted to hunt down a dark spirit hiding in this city,” I said. “One you’ve been in direct contact with. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Kieran fell quiet at that, slumping against the wall. After a moment of thought he said, “Are you with the Church? An… Exorcist?”

Close enough to the mark. “Who I work for isn’t any of your concern,” I said. “All you need to know is that I know some very important people, and they’re keeping Laessa Greengood safe. Safer than you did by going to her home last night.”

Kieran flinched. “I was… Confused.”

“You understand your condition?” I asked him. I’d made a point of getting it through to him the previous night, but the memories of the dead could be spotty. I needed to be sure.

“I died,” Kieran said. “And… I came back.”

“You got trapped in your own corpse,” I told him, easing some of the harshness out of my tone. “It can happen, especially in certain places. You fell into a drainage canal, got washed into a sewer.”

Kieran grimaced. Hugging his own arms and pacing to one corner he said, “I remember that. I… I jumped.”

“This thing, this demon, it was in your head. Don’t beat yourself up about it, kid. As these things go, you got lucky.”

“Lucky,” Kieran scoffed. He turned to me, his one-eyed stare becoming appraising. “You look like a warrior more than a priest. You’re going to kill this thing?”

“I would very much like to,” I confirmed. “Right now, you’re one of my only leads. It’s gone to ground, and hidden itself very well. All I know is that it likes to make its presence known to creatives, like you. Through your paintings, right?”

Kieran let out a breath that misted blue in the dimly lit room. “I thought I was going mad. I kept seeing things in my dreams, and while awake… I couldn’t stop myself from putting them on canvas. I’d always been cautious about how much I stole, but I just couldn’t help myself.”

“Why steal your materials?” I asked, curious.

“I was poor,” Kieran said bluntly. “I wanted to become famous, find a patron. I thought…” He let out another breath, muttering something that sounded like admonishment.

“You thought if you became well known enough,” I finished for him, “you could lift yourself out of the commons. Marry the girl you loved.”

Kieran looked at me, set his jaw, and nodded. “Yes.”

In the rush of trying to get him away from the priorguard and track him down after, I hadn’t let myself feel sorry for this tragic youth. I did, then.

“I’m sorry,” I told him, because there wasn’t anything else to say.

“What’s going to happen now?” Kieran asked me, looking for all the world like a scared young man despite his macabre wounds.

“For now, I’m going to see if there’s anything the magus who dragged you here can do to make things more comfortable for you. Then I’m going to ask you some questions. Some of them might be hard to answer. I want to know when you started having your visions, where you were, what you were doing, who you were talking to. It might be hard to remember, but we have ways to help with that.”

Kieran nodded. “I’ll answer as best I can. And… After that?”

A difficult question. I exhaled slowly, feeling very tired.

“I can’t make you alive again. Dead is dead. It’s going to be up to you, kid. We could give you a good burial, put you to rest. I can make sure your soul gets to Draubard safely, get a cleric to do the proper rites. I know one, and she’d help.”

Kieran nodded, surprising me with how calmly he took it. “Is that the only option?”

“Probably the best one,” I admitted. “Lias is a magus. He might be able to make use of a willing shade as an assistant, if you want to linger a while. It’s only putting off the inevitable, though.”

The young painter closed his eyes and bowed his head, his expression pained. “Let me…” He visibly steeled himself. “Let me think on it? And I’ll try to remember how all this started, so I can help you.”

I nodded. “I’ll give you an hour.”

It wasn’t enough time for the boy to grieve, and to come to terms with his fate, but I couldn’t spare anything more.