Lodestone

by Katherine Forrister

  She strained her ears as she strode with fury through the dark hallway, but the Overlord’s voice never followed. Her face contorted with anger and hurt as she picked up speed and bolted through the keep. She slammed into the heavy wooden door that led to the outermost courtyard and pushed it open.

  The mighty shadow of the wall loomed ahead. The gray sky looked like dawn had never made way for the afternoon sun. Deep, pervasive mist clouded the grounds, obscuring the wall and the ominous gate that surged into Melaine’s heart as if calling to her. She hadn’t wanted to step foot outside of the gate since coming to Highstrong, but now, she tripped over the thought. The castle felt oppressive where once it had been freeing.

  Then a new thought snagged her. Could she even leave? Karina’s words about only certain people being worthy enough to open the gate gnawed at her. She had to know if she was worthy enough. She had to know what the Overlord thought of her. Was she just a stonegirl whose only purpose was to serve him? Did he plan on keeping her here for the rest of her days…for his? How brief of a time would that be? How much time did he have left?

  Melaine felt the urge to collapse, but she somehow held her feet. Her life had become painful. Highstrong had once promised a life beyond base survival, but now, her heart ached so much that she may as well have been dying.

  She forced her feet to walk across the grounds. Her boots, made of much finer leather than she’d ever worn before coming to Highstrong, clicked with perfectly symmetrical heels across flags of stone. The hem of her white chiffon dress brushed the fallen leaves that curled like fetal corpses. The fog closed in around her like a cold hand, and the closer she got to the gate, the tighter its grasp became.

  She was suffocating. Every inhale drew in wet condensation that triggered coughs. She paused and caught her breath, looking around her at the heavy fog that seemed to grow thicker with each passing second. It carried oppressive magic within, and its coldness seeped into her bones, plummeting into freezing, paralyzing depths.

  Melaine gasped for air but couldn’t get the relief her lungs needed. She turned back toward the castle but then stopped with one foot only on its toes.

  A ghostly figure stood beside the door that led back inside. It was hard to make out in the fog, but she could see the outline of a head, a neck, a body. The legs descended into the fog so she couldn’t see its feet—if it even had feet.

  Her first thoughts were of the woman who had been haunting her in waking life and in internal visions. But this figure’s presence felt different from the tortured yet benevolent warnings of the woman. This apparition felt angry.

  Goosebumps rose on Melaine’s skin. She tore her eyes away, but with that one fleeting glance, her heart pumped harder with fear.

  There were more of them—more ghostly apparitions scattered throughout the grounds. They all stood still as death in the fog. She couldn’t see their faces or eyes. When she looked closer, she deciphered the shapes of helmets on their heads. Battered First Era armor clothed their bodies, and swords trembled at their sides as they began to walk.

  “What do you want?” Melaine whispered, her voice too hoarse for a louder sound. Either they didn’t hear or didn’t care to answer because they all kept striding forward in eerie silence. As they grew closer, their clanking swords and shields and rattling armor became louder with each passing second. The echo of horses’ hooves and frightened neighs mixed with the intense clash of swords that would have made sparks fly if the steel was real. The racket of cart wheels rolling violently over the ground sounded, and the bombardment of a trebuchet boomed against the massive, iron gate.

  Melaine nearly fell off her feet. The apparitions kept gliding with ghostly slowness toward her, twelve of them, twenty, fifty, all emerging in endless regiments through the mist. She would soon be surrounded by an entire army if she didn’t do something. And the whispers…the whispers from the ancient urn. Voices and words she didn’t understand kept coming, kept speaking, yelling.

  She bolted for the gate. The sounds of an imaginary, perhaps remembered, battle roared around her, assaulting her ears as she tried to focus only on the lever waiting in the gatehouse. The lever she’d seen Karina use to open the mighty gate.

  She felt a wind at her back, even colder than the freezing air of winter and filled with more dark, oppressive magic. She pushed herself harder, terrified of the damage that magic might wreak if it caught her. She finally reached the gatehouse and threw all of her weight against the lever. It stuck for a moment but then lurched forward and settled into place with a shudder. Melaine let go and prayed the gate would open for her—quickly.

  It didn’t move. Panic hit her harder, and she glanced over her shoulder. The entities were closing in. Some of their helmets were shattered in places or dented so far in the skulls beneath must have been dented as well. Through places where the metal had broken off, she could see bone and gristle. Splintered ribs and naked bones peeked through rips in chainmail. Some of the apparitions were missing legs, but they kept walking as if they had them.

  The gears buried under the gate started to rumble. As they turned, the gate started grinding its iron teeth. Melaine spun back around and watched its gruesome jaws opening wide.

  She didn’t wait for the iron bars to sink all the way into the deep trench in the ground. She ran straight to the gate. She didn’t feel any dark, warding magic trying to keep her inside, so she jumped over the lowering bars and stumbled on the other side.

  Then she gasped as she felt an icy hand grip her wrist from within the castle grounds. She spun around and screamed. A woman’s wide, white-clouded eyes looked straight into hers, the familiar apparition’s wild white hair wisping around her head. Her skin was rotting on her mottled cheekbones, her veins black and her lips gashed as she hissed, “It’s hungry!”

  Melaine ripped her arm from the spirit’s grasp and stumbled back. The spirit dissipated, and the others beyond were camouflaged by the thick fog. The storm of whispers ceased. The dark, nauseating ward of warning that Melaine had felt the last time she stood outside of Highstrong Keep’s gate was absent. The gate remained open, but it seemed the apparitions were contained.

  All of Highstrong felt like it was its own, encapsulated world of darkness and mystery. Melaine felt like an outsider again, looking into a place in which she did not fit.

  She backed away and turned around. The crags and black trees of the surrounding forest were menacing beneath the heavy gray clouds hanging low in the sky. But the fog amongst their trunks wasn’t as thick. Cold, meager sunlight shone down brightly enough to light Melaine’s path. She didn’t know where she was going, but she couldn’t stay at Highstrong any longer.

  She took off down the winding, rocky path that Overseer Scroupe’s carriage had once followed. She didn’t have the luxury of a carriage now, only her own two feet. She had her wand still; she’d made sure of that. It carried a speed spell, but she was loath to waste it. What if the spirits came back? What if they could break through Highstrong Keep’s thick walls and hunt her with menacing motives?

  She ran down the path. Her breaths came hard and fast as her boots pounded the rocky earth. The trees reached down with scratching fingers, and she heard the distant howl of a wolf deep in the forest.

  Something big lurked in the path ahead. She slowed her run and tried to make out what it was through her wild senses and the oppressive fog. She let out a breath when she realized it was Stebbon’s cart, empty of supplies, with his two workhorses still attached. They stomped and snorted, clearly anxious but not frightened enough to bolt.

  Stebbon was nowhere in sight.

  Melaine walked with slow steps toward the cart, careful not to scare the horses. This could be her ride home, though her stomach clenched at the thought. Home. Stakeside. Where else would she go?

  She reached the horses and shushed them. The closest one eyed her with its big, brown eyes. Its flanks were panting as if it had just finished a fast run. It whinnied and bucked its head toward a thic
ket of bushes off the road. Melaine frowned and looked at the thicket. A scrap of torn, woolen fabric clung to a bramble. It was Stebbon’s blue traveling coat.

  “What happened?” she asked the horse. She stroked the horse’s muzzle. Part of her wanted to hop in the cart, take the reins, and drive back to Centara, but a troublesome thought held her back. Stebbon could be lost or wounded, and Melaine couldn’t imagine being out in the thick fog of the menacing forest without hope of returning to civilization. She winced and stroked the horse again.

  “Don’t leave without me,” she said, hoping the animal would obey. She then walked to the thicket to inspect the piece of wool. She didn’t see any blood, and a quick look over the thicket revealed no clues as to what had happened to Stebbon. She picked her way around the thicket and trod a few paces into the trees. She saw skid-marks in the fallen leaves mixed with heavy footprints in the exposed mud. It looked like Stebbon had stumbled his way deeper into the forest.

  What was he running from?

  Melaine shivered and followed the tracks. Her recent encounter with an army of what she could only assume were ghosts or lost souls made her imagination writhe with all sorts of possible dangers. Though she tried to wrangle her rational thoughts, she had to wonder—if it were a wolf pack or some other beast, why would it ignore the horses, who were easy prey when hitched to a cart?

  Whatever had chased Stebbon off the road and into the forest could be a threat to anyone who traveled the path, even to Melaine. And the mysterious threat might not stay within the forest. It might go for Highstrong next.

  She kept walking, scanning the ground with every step. She saw another scrap of fabric in the leaves a few paces to her right. Then a larger piece of blue lurked through a low thicket of underbrush. She crept toward it with quiet steps, turning her head at various angles to catch more glimpses of blue wool, and then she saw part of Stebbon’s brown trousers and black boots.

  Her heart thumped as she kicked aside the brush to reach him.

  Melaine gasped. Stebbon’s shredded clothing was familiar, but the man himself was unrecognizable. His clothes had been torn away, exposing his mutilated body. His flesh and meat were torn clean off his bones and thrown to one side in a bloody, reeking mess. The visible bones were splintered, exposing their insides. The marrow had been sucked out.

  Melaine shook all over. Stebbon’s body was in the same desecrated state as Talem’s when she’d found him within Highstrong’s grounds. She wanted to run, but she had to know how deep the similarities went. Her survival might depend on it. She swallowed and crouched beside the body. The smell of piss and blood and offal was consuming, but she fought off her nausea and bolstered her courage. She reached out to touch Stebbon’s broken forearm.

  She instantly recoiled. The body was utterly devoid of magic. Just like Talem’s.

  She had assumed Talem had been tossed over the castle wall and that his bones had snapped that way, but she felt foolish for that assumption now. The fractures of Stebbon’s bones looked deliberate and methodical, and Talem’s bones had been snapped in the exact same places. No fall could have replicated the injuries with such coincidental perfection. Both bodies looked like someone or something had snapped their bones in all the right places to get the most marrow—the most magic—from them as possible.

  Melaine’s chest concaved. She felt as if it would be impossible to draw her next breath. Her past worries that the Overlord may have been responsible for somehow extracting Talem’s magic were extinguished. The Overlord didn’t do this. The Overlord hadn’t come out all this way to convince Stebbon to give him all of his magic. The Overlord wasn’t strong enough—magically or physically—to break a body in this horrific manner. The more Melaine considered it, the more absurd the idea became.

  The Overlord wasn’t responsible for Stebbon’s death. Something else was. Something that could steal magic. Something unheard of.

  Melaine stood on wavering legs. If whatever thing had sucked the marrow and magic from both Stebbon’s and Talem’s bones was still around, then the occupants of Highstrong might be in danger. Karina. Serj. The Overlord.

  Melaine could run. She could take one of Stebbon’s horses and ride away either back to Centara or a surrounding village, perhaps even to someplace unknown.

  But then who would warn Highstrong of the danger outside…even inside its walls?

  Melaine grimaced at her own idiocy but knew what she had to do. She took out her wand and lifted the heap of Stebbon’s bones and flesh and clothing into the air. She pulled it along an invisible, hovering string until she reached the horses and cart. She wrapped Stebbon’s body in the canvas that had covered the supplies and laid him inside the cart. Then she slapped the horse’s flank.

  “Go back to the city,” she said. The horses whinnied and took off, seeming glad for an instruction to do something other than stand in the dark, scared and unsure.

  Melaine knew how they felt.

  She watched the cart rattle down the stony path before she turned around and ran in the opposite direction—back to Highstrong Keep.

  She didn’t stop running when she reached the open gate. She couldn’t waste time, and if the soldier apparitions were waiting for her, well, she would just have to face them.

  Fortunately, they were gone, and there was no sign of the haunting woman either. The fog wasn’t quite as thick as it had been. Melaine crossed the threshold of the massive gate without a hitch and pulled the lever. The gate closed with a heavy, resounding groan.

  “Guess I am worthy,” she muttered with a wry huff as she caught her breath.

  “What are you doing?”

  Melaine whipped around to see Karina standing stiff and tall at the entrance to the small gatehouse.

  “I need to speak with the Overlord,” Melaine said. “Right away.”

  “The Overlord is resting,” Karina replied, her frown severe, but she looked paler than usual. “As should you be. Do you know what time it is?”

  “I don’t care what time it is,” Melaine snapped. “I need to see him.”

  She walked past Karina, but Karina grabbed her arm in a surprisingly firm grip.

  “You will not disturb him,” she said. “You already gave him a trying enough afternoon as it is.”

  “That—that was not my fault,” Melaine said, though she felt a squirm of guilt that she may have exhausted the Overlord during their argument. “When will he be done resting?”

  “Tomorrow morning, I expect,” Karina said. Melaine scowled.

  “Go to your quarters, Melaine. You should be inside this time of evening.” Karina glanced around the courtyard. “We both should be. I’m appalled that you would dare open this gate without permission. No matter your motivations.”

  Melaine felt another chill run through her and looked around the courtyard as well. Did Karina know what her motivations had been?

  “Karina,” she said, trying to control the trembling overtaking her voice. She might receive nothing but a mocking retort from the woman, but things in Highstrong had become too threatening for Melaine to not take this chance. “I’ve been seeing things. In the castle, in the courtyard. There’s some kind of powerful magic happening, and I think it’s dangerous. We all, including the Overlord, might be in danger.”

  “I assure you, the Overlord is quite safe in his quarters,” Karina said, though Melaine caught a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. “As you will be.”

  “Karina.”

  “I will escort you to your room,” Karina said with a cold expression that offered no room for debate. Melaine clenched her jaw to stop her impending protest. She couldn’t tell if Karina knew about the apparitions or not, and her staunch protection of the Overlord was an infuriating obstacle, but arguing now wouldn’t do any good when the strict woman was this resolute. Melaine decided that she would find a tactful way to speak with the Overlord about Karina’s attitude when she saw him next—which would hopefully be sooner rather than later.

  “All
right,” Melaine said. Karina gave her a clipped nod and turned on her heel. Melaine walked at her side to the castle’s entrance, but she didn’t feel any safer inside the stone keep than she had in the exposed courtyard.

  She would have to stay calm and controlled. Morning would come fast. As soon as the sun was up, she would uncover all of the mysteries of Highstrong Keep, its occupants, and whatever evil hunted them.

  Chapter 10

  The night felt hard and cold around Melaine’s body as she tried to sleep. She hadn’t felt this on edge since her time on the streets. Her racing heart and sense of dread rivaled the state she had been in when entering the Hole.

  She tried to focus on remaining calm. She had to wait until morning to speak to the Overlord. Wandering the nightly corridors didn’t sound appealing, but more so, she was afraid for the Overlord’s health. He was so frail. Waking him from his much-needed rest might put him in as much danger as any dark magic the keep could possess.

  Melaine squeezed her eyes shut as a wave of hurt rolled through her.

  She didn’t want him to die.

  Serj couldn’t be right. Karina’s restrained grief couldn’t be valid. And Melaine had to be misinterpreting the looks of defeat that she’d seen in the Overlord’s eyes the past two days. He couldn’t be giving up.

  Melaine’s heart clenched, and she rolled over in bed. She drew her blankets around her and tucked them under her chin. She focused on taking calming breaths.

  Then the cold night felt hot as if the spent coals had leapt from the fireplace and flared beside her bed. She threw off the blankets and exposed her body, glad that her chemise was thin enough to let a bit of air filter through to her skin. But she was still sweltering, and her mind was fraught with frustration. She sighed and then ground her teeth, tugging on a string of her hair. She thumped her head back on the soft pillow and stared at the dark ceiling.