In my dream, I see fire raining from the sky.
Not a dream. A memory. But, in the manner of dreams, visions flash before my eyes without order or sense. I relive fragmented moments of time, become lost in them until I feel as though I am descending into an ever-deepening whirlpool. Spinning, spinning, and all the while I see—
A regal figure pierced by a dozen blades, made to kneel as his crown slips from silver hair to shatter on a floor carved from living crystal—
Flame raining from a tortured sky to fall on a dream-wrought city, white towers crashing down as armies clash in the burning fields beyond—
Golden forests blackening as fire sweeps across them, trees twisting into nightmare shapes as a great shadow strides through the destruction, winged in cinders and crowned by a smoldering sky—
Columns of ash-masked figures trailing across the land, fleeing the destruction, beginning to scream as the sky darkens moments before arrows and things worse begin to fall—
An elven warrior wearing a bronze circlet and armor of furs and hides, blood-soaked and fell-eyed, turning his back on me—
A woman reaching for me as I back away. I raise a sword between us. Her eyes melting into red tears as fire bursts from them and she lunges, clawed fingers stretching, her form coming undone to reveal what lies beneath—
The flow of images are unceasing, until I fear my mind will come apart with them, that I will become nothing but fragments of moments, shards of mistakes.
Is this death?******
“—And so it is the judgment of this court that you are to be stripped of your titles and any inheritance they may allow. Your knighthood is hereby revoked, your name stricken from canon. You may not bear your own mark or wear the mark of any member of the peerage, either in this or any other land, under pain of death. You are declared anathema to all divisions of the Church, whose servants will not grant you aid or succor so long as you are bound by the terms of your excommunication. Do you understand these terms as I have read them, Alken Hewer?”
I looked up from where I knelt in the center of the hall. I met the eyes of the man — the king — who stood foremost amid a ring of stern faces. He was dressed for war, as were most of those who stood in the hall, even though it had been months since the last battle. An iron crown rested on his charcoal hair and his scarred face may as well have been wrought from the same.
He was not the only monarch in that room. Dale kings, earls from the heartlands and the northern coasts, counts, barons, chieftains — a score or more great nobles formed large portions of the ring in which I was enclosed. But it wasn’t just nobles in that court. I met the eyes of Wildedale rangers, militia captains, clericons, and adventurer fellowships. Dwarven axelords glowered at me alongside furtive shadowgnomes, the latter group’s eyes gleaming eerily from their dim nooks. Some elves were there too, their beautiful faces made wolfish from a decade of war and grief.
There were so few of them left.
The war had brought together the peoples of Urn like nothing had in half a millennium. Among them were faces I knew well. Friends, once — now they seemed barely more than strangers. I saw Maerlys standing with her people, face etched with a cold sorrow. No sign of her brother. Lias was with her, face shrouded in a midnight blue cowl so only his mouth and chin were visible, hand gripping a twisted blackwood staff. Donnelly, or his shade, slouched in half-solid form in the shadow of a pillar. Josric, clad like an old Cymrinorean myrmidon, his leonine features troubled.
Rosanna. She stood by the king who passed my sentence. She would not meet my eyes.
Damn her, then.
I don’t know what I’d been looking for in their faces. Hate? Disgust? Pity? Whatever it was, all I saw were dour masks caught fast by years of struggle. I turned back to the king acting as the voice of the court. “I understand, lord.” Grander titles were inappropriate here. As far as this new Accord was concerned, all here were equal, save for me.
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The iron-crowned king nodded once, slow and thoughtful. “In light of your service in the war, we are prepared to offer you clemency. You will face no incarceration or censure. You may travel to whatever land you will so long as whatever power governs it is willing to accept you, and you may bear arms insofar as it is necessary to protect yourself. You may find work as you will, but may not hold any official office with connection to the Accorded Realms or their representatives.”
It went on for some time. I heard it all, though seemingly at a distance. I had withdrawn deep into myself, aware the whole while of the ring of eyes fixed on me, some of whom I’d once called friends, rivals, and benefactors. They may as well have been a council of statues. When movement in the gathering caught my eye, I followed it without lifting my head. I thought I caught sight of a dark shape drifting through the assembly, white robes shifting as though in an unseen wind. I could almost see a hint of pale yellow hair in the bands of daylight cutting through the chamber’s high windows.
When I blinked the phantom image was gone. She wasn’t there. It was just a trick of my mind, not a ghost like poor Donnelly.
Or perhaps, I thought, it was the beginnings of a curse.
******
They say fire rained from the sky the day Seydis fell.
This is true. I can say as much because I was there, and I could have stopped it.
I deserved far worse than mere disgrace.
******
I woke in the mud.
There was a terrible moment where I believed I was back in the war, lying in the mud of a trampled battlefield surrounded by terror and death. I could almost hear the screams of horses, the shouts of combatants, the clash of swords, and the eerie music of sorcery.
But those sounds faded and it was just birdsong and wind through leaves.
It took me a while to stir. Even then, rising was something of a process. I was methodical about it, testing fingers and toes before trying to shift my limbs. Nothing seemed paralyzed, at least. I managed to get hands under me, sliding them through damp mud, then one knee. I rose.
Regretted it. Pain shot through my body from so many sources I couldn’t guess where each ache originated. I groaned. Froze.
I didn’t fall back down, though that’s all I wanted to do. I made myself keep moving, ignoring the pain, until I was on my knees. I opened my eyes and saw only darkness. I began to panic. Was I blind? Had I lost my sight? I brought my hands up to my face, feeling tentatively, and realized it was only mud. I wiped as much of it as I could away — my hands were just as filthy — and then blinked at my surroundings.
I was in a forest. It was a cheerily bright day, which was nearly as disorienting as the temporary blindness had been. The sun pierced through the canopy as so many golden blades to dapple the woods in light. I could hear the river at my back.
It all came back to me in a rush. Vinhithe. The abbot. My flight through the streets, the garrison, the knights. The storm. Getting shot and falling into the river. I reached down, winced, and found the crossbow bolt still embedded in my hip.
Still alive. Though, judging by the bruising and myriad other injuries I felt beneath all the mud, I was in a bad way. The river hadn’t been gentle.
How far had it taken me?
Judging by the sun it was midday. Night had just fallen when I’d been taken by the river. I had brief memories of being in the water, being swept along its current, unable to do anything. Terror, helplessness… I shuddered at the memory. I couldn’t remember if I’d pulled myself onto the shore by some stroke of luck or if I’d just washed ashore and fallen unconscious then. It was all a jumble.
In a surge of sudden panic I checked for my ring. When I found it still where it always was on my left forefinger, I breathed a sigh of relief. I took the time to brush mud away from it to reveal the ivory band. I ran a thumb along the smooth black stone set in the ring, and felt calmer.
It was only then I flexed the fingers of my right hand and, finding them empty, looked around for my weapon. I found it quickly enough, stuck in some driftwood near the edge of the water. It had been jammed into a broken segment of a small tree, and another memory flashed through my thoughts. Tumbling through the river along with bits of wreckage. I’d kept hold of the axe and sunk it into a broken segment of tree, using it to keep aloft and keep hold of my weapon.
I’d like to call it quick thinking, but it had been little more than dumb luck.
Wincing, I stood and limped over to the axe. Every step disturbed the bolt stuck into my hip and I collapsed halfway, breathing hard and sweating. I stood after several minutes and reached the axe what felt like an eternity later. I pried it from the driftwood where, of course, it was stuck. I finally had it free with a shout of effort and pain that echoed through the forest. When it was done I collapsed on the dead tree, gasping for breath and lifted the axe up to the sunlight. As my heart calmed I found myself glowering at the weapon. I could still see the bloodstains, old and fresh, patterned across the blade in varying shades of deep red and brown. Even the river hadn’t washed them off.
“Can’t get rid of you, can I?” I said to the axe. “You bastard thing.”
I don’t know what I’d expected. It was my burden and one I’d chosen willingly enough. Not that the alternative had been more appealing. I’d come close to that this time. I botched that one badly I thought, thinking of Vinhithe. And now I was in the woods, possibly miles downriver from the town, with a bolt stuck in me and the whole earldom probably out for my blood. Perhaps they’d assume me dead, but I wouldn’t count on it.
Then, when the sun went down, things would get worse. I needed to find shelter and get my injuries treated, or…
Or nothing. There was no use considering the alternative. I would survive. I had to.
I had not yet done enough.
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