Arc 1: Chapter 20: The Hunters

Arc 1: Chapter 20: The Hunters

I have an old memory that’s never left me. It’s from when I was a boy, back home in the Dales.

I wasn’t born a lord. I earned my knighthood through deed, a touch of luck, and the whim of a certain iron-willed highborn. Half my relatives were woodcutters. I’d even taken my House name from those roots — Hewer. I’d thought it a fine jest at the time, though Rose had rolled her royal eyes.

When I was still a commoner lad, I’d gotten lost in an elfwood near my village. It had been my first experience of just how strange the world could truly be, how frightening. I’d gone from the tedium of hard work and pleasant summer days into a world of whispering shadows and dreaming trees. A world without death. One that didn’t forget.

There’d been wisdom in the roots of those ancient trees. And horror. The priests say the elves mentored humankind when we first came to these shores, took us under their wing and taught us how to wield our souls, the best weapon we have against the Adversary.

I’d once thought of elves as my father talked about them — kind, whimsical, beautiful, and bearing the wisdom of immortals.

He never mentioned how immortality can make you go goring mad.

The hem of my worn red cloak glided over twisting roots and undergrowth. The air was heavy and thick in the shadowed depths of the Irkwood, stinking of rot. My eyes kept wanting to track movement at the edges of my vision, flitting phantom shapes which might have been mist, or my nerves, or the wraiths I knew would haunt the trees.

I could hear whispering too. There was no wind, no singing birds or insect sounds, so the murmuring voices in the near distance provided the only ambience besides my own crunching boots.

I knew better than to try to listen to those voices. Elves don’t die — immortal is immortal — but their flesh can still expire just as a human’s can. Their souls are made of hardier stuff than a man’s. Anywhere I’d find the Old Children, I’d find their shades lingering. Whispering.

Bitter.

So many of them had died during the Fall. Most of them, so far as I knew. The land was infested with fey ghosts, undying, refusing to forget.

“He’s here,” a voice muttered, louder than the rest.

“He’s come!” Another answered, outrage and excitement melting together in the words.

“Which one is he?” A third asked.

“Doesn’t matter, they’re all oathbreakers. They let the towers burn, let the Archon die.”

“Betrayers!”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Liars.”

“Murderers.”

I ignored the vague shapes in the deeper shadows and moved on, further into the wood.

“He bears the Axe of Hithlen.”

“The Headsman.”

“Headsman!”

“The Headsman has come.”

I ignored the whispering voices and stopped in a small clearing. Mist wrapped around the forest floor, curling around the trees and clinging to the hem of my cloak. I wore my hood up to shadow my features — not to disguise, but so the mild enchantments woven into the garment would help keep the wraiths and wild od from interfering with my senses.

I spotted something half lost amid the undergrowth and knelt. It was a saddlebag, likely taken from a chimera or perhaps the preoster’s carriage. It was old, worn, and — when I inspected it — empty.

There was something vaguely familiar about the pack. I frowned, wondering if I was going insane. It looked completely ordinary, unassuming, but…

I froze as I realized something had changed in the surrounding forest. The wraiths had stopped their constant murmuring, and its absence was like a scream. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

I tightened my grip on my axe, freeing it from the folds of my cloak where I’d been concealing it. I kept it low, out of sight, lightly resting the fingers of my right hand closer to the head.

A rustling in the surrounding trees. Not an animal. No subtle sensation from my magic of something unnatural, either.

The creaking of a taut string, quiet as a whisper.

I whirled and swung my axe in the very moment the crossbow fired. Something hurtled from the undergrowth, and the edge of my weapon caught it. The impact jarred my arms, set my teeth on edge — no mere bolt. Something heavier—

Hollow. Whatever I’d struck shattered, splattering me with a viscous warm liquid.

Glass?

A shape moved in the bushes. I lunged, acting on instinct, leaping in a flurry of red wool at the movement. I struck something — someone — and we both went tumbling down a shallow slope. A whirl of confusion as we rolled, branches and thorny bushes catching and scratching, grunts, a half-formed curse.

The roll ended with me on top. Snarling, I brought up my axe and planted a boot on the crook of an arm as I caught the flash of a blade, pinning it.

And looked straight into the aged face of Olliard of Kell.

“Doctor?” I asked, confused.

The old physik had lost his glasses in the tumble. Half-blind eyes blinked up at me, then widened. Olliard’s thinning hair was in disarray, and his brown robes were covered in leaves and mud. He had pulled a knife, a thin, curved blade with the aspect of a scalpel, which I’d trapped under a boot. He’d lost his grip on the weapon he’d tried to shoot me with. It lay several feet away. It was a crossbow, but of a sort I’d never seen before. Too many parts, and as much metal as wood.

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“Alken?” Olliard asked, breathless and confused. “What are you—”

“Master!”

I turned just in time to see Lisette burst from the woods. Her hands moved in a complex series of patterns, and I saw she had a mesh of string held between her hands cats-cradle style, string wrapped around each finger. She pulled the strings taught between her outstretched fingers, revealing a pattern between.

A pattern, I realized, which formed a rune.

There was a flash of white-gold light, and suddenly I no longer crouched atop the old doctor. I was ripped into the air like a doll with barely a chance to shout. My back slammed against the trunk of a large tree hard enough to leave a week’s worth of bruises, and all the wind went out of my lungs in a rush.

When I was next aware of anything, I was lying on the ground. I blinked, getting my bearings, and found I couldn’t move my arms or legs. They were held by something solid as good rope or iron links. Looking down, I saw thin, nearly invisible lines of pale golden light tying my legs together. I suspected the same bonded my arms behind my back.

Lisette scurried to her master’s side and helped the old man stand, all without letting the pattern of strings between her hands go slack. Her attention remained fixed on me, a bead of sweat forming on her brow. She murmured what sounded like a litany of prayer under her breath.

Olliard winced as he stood, favoring one leg. He didn’t glance at me as he limped to his fallen weapon and picked it up, sheathing the blade he’d pulled in some pocket hidden beneath a fold of his robes. He took a moment to check the crossbow, then turned his attention to me with a weary sense of inevitability.

“So,” the doctor said with a sigh. “We meet again, Alken.”

I didn’t reply at once, instead taking in a few details. I tested the magical bonds and found they had some slack. Lisette narrowed her eyes in concentration and they tightened, hard enough to make me wince in pain.

“Doctor,” I greeted the old man. “Nun.”

Lisette scowled, but didn’t stop her murmuring incantation.

I glanced down at myself, and found I was covered in some metallic, pale gray substance. The contents of whatever the doctor had shot at me, I realized. “What is this stuff?”

“Liquid mercury,” Olliard said. “Quicksilver.” He pursed his lips. “I suppose you’re not one of the Baron’s creatures, or it would have set you afire. The substance is quite ungentle to the undead.”

“Azsilver?” I asked.

Olliard let a tight smile flicker across his face. “Of course. I’m no amateur.”

“So that story about you just passing through Caelfall on your rounds as an itinerant healer was troll shit,” I said. I narrowed my eyes. “You’re hunters.”

Not just any hunters. Vampire hunters. I could think of no other reason why the doctor would be packing weaponized moonsilver.

“I received a letter from Preoster Micah many months ago, while I was still in the continent. He feared a growing darkness in the land, and believed House Falconer was at the root of it. I have some experience hunting monsters in well guarded dens.” Olliard was loading another missile into the strange crossbow. The weapon had four arms instead of the customary two, several strings, and what looked like an iron tube in the gap where a bolt would normally go. Instead of a bolt, he placed a small gray ball inside before pulling a latch, producing a solid ka-clank.

“The Baron isn’t a vampire,” I said. I felt certain of that — I’d watched him eat regular food, and I’d sensed no corruption in him even when we’d been face to face. Unlike with Catrin, I’d looked for such signs the moment we’d been face to face.

It wouldn’t be the first time you’d missed it, I reminded myself.

“No,” Olliard agreed, surprising me. “He isn’t. But he does ally himself with such creatures, and he’s responsible for Micah’s death. Or, at least, his disciple in the village is certain of the fact. Brother Edgar believed the Baron would threaten the life of Micah’s replacement, so we came out to steer him away from the village and into safety, then waited for one of the lord’s dogs to pick up the trail…”

The doctor’s foggy eyes fell on me, and they were far sharper than I’d first thought. Harder, and less kind. “And look at what came sniffing.”

“I don’t work for the baron,” I said.

“Save it.” Olliard’s voice was cold. “We know you went into the castle. Who are you, really? Not a ghoul, like those guards, or this would have hurt quite a bit more.” He nodded to his odd weapon.

“I came to warn the priest, just as you did.” I tried to straighten, at least so I could talk to them from my knees rather than face down in the wet grass, but Lisette’s litany suddenly rose into a harsh onslaught of words and the golden bonds around my arms tightened. I gasped, fearing for a moment my arms would break, then slammed against the tree again as the auratic tethers dragged me to it like a magnet.

“I wouldn’t move,” Olliard suggested thoughtfully. “I’ve seen her use those to break bones. The same technique she used to stitch your wounds, you know. People never consider how easily the healing arts can be turned to the purpose of unmaking the body. The alchemists in the West know this fact well. They’ve made all sorts of tools just as potent as any elf magic in this land…” He lifted his quicksilver crossbow and aimed it at my skull. “What I shot at you before was just glass. This one is iron.”

I opened my mouth to say more, to tell them they had me wrong and that I was Orson Falconer’s enemy as much as they — but I stopped. They wouldn’t trust anything I said while held prisoner with a weapon aimed at my skull, and the truth wasn’t something they’d easily believe in any circumstance.

Better to show them. I gathered will for a Command, shaping my aura to freeze the doctor in place before he could shoot me. After, I’d break Lisette’s auratic bonds and we’d continue the conversation on more equitable ground. Her magic was good, clever, but not terribly strong as far as I could tell.

Lisette’s eyes widened, and in a flash her fingers danced through a series of complicated motions. The thin strings in her hands altered their pattern, and the quality of her murmured prayers changed.

Before I could speak a word, golden light shot through my lips. Down, then, up, and then repeating the process a dozen times in the blink of an eye. My lips slammed together and stayed there, neatly stitched.

Olliard frowned and glanced at his apprentice.

“He was about to use magic on us,” she explained. “Not sure what kind.”

“Ah. Good thinking then, my dear.”

“What are we going to do with him, doctor?” Lisette asked, as I struggled futilely against the bonds. I tried to speak, but my words just came out as an incoherent mumble.

“We don’t have time to interrogate him. We need to get back to the village and check in on Brother Edgar, see if he managed to find those old maps for us. Our time is short, and our enemy watchful.” He pondered a moment before asking, “how long will your magic hold him, once we’ve departed?”

Lisette grimaced. “Not long.”

Olliard nodded and lowered his weapon, then approached me. He pulled something from within the layered folds of his monkish robes — a metal syringe.

I struggled, but the small man was quick, decisive, and stronger than he seemed. He plunged the metal needle into my neck. Within the space of three breaths my eyes were growing heavy.

“Not a deadly concoction,” Olliard muttered. “I just need to make certain you don’t interfere. I don’t know how you’re involved in all of this, and I’ve no time or patience to sift your lies from truth. You’ll sleep for a while, and when you awake… Well.” He shrugged. “I don’t imagine we’re likely to meet again. By this time tomorrow, either I or Orson Falconer will be dead.”

No, I thought through the spreading thickness in my blood. You don’t know what’s in the castle, how bad things are. You can’t handle him alone, can’t—

I couldn’t say any of it aloud, not with my aura-stitched lips.

Lisette said something, but I didn’t hear it through the spreading haze in my thoughts. I closed my eyes, and everything became dark.