At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  So it was that they came to the very doors of Verdan. By nature, Verdan’s people were folk accustomed to the harder matters of life. Life existed there, same as any other, but the people—former soldiers and soldiers’ sons, wives, daughters, and the hard-set explorers that always journeyed with them—were accustomed to strife, and not easily intimidated. The surrounding farmsteads and logging camps, it became readily apparent, had deserted their posts and fled into the town proper, such that when the army’s scouts returned to camp, they came with stories of a gathering several hundred strong, replete with the budding semblance of earthen walls. For all intents, they seemed spoiling for a fight.

  The place itself was quiet. Even the animals fled before the deafening of their marching steps. Winter had not halted the logging, and more of the town lay bared to the light than ever. It made Rurik strangely self-conscious, as though the world itself were steadily breaking down the gates to his last bastion.

  The others went to this place with only the outlook of soldiers: another conquest. Another place for rest. For food and drink. Women to warm their beds.

  Rurik was sent ahead, with the remnants of Verdan’s own levy besides, to take the town’s measure and return to them as lord and master. He asked for the Company of the Eagle, but Tessel was no fool. Rurik compromised, and gained Alviss for the trouble. They went afoot, shunning the gryphon Tessel had offered Rurik. What’s more, Rurik went to the place in reverence, for it was more than a place to live: it was a shrine to memory, to the toils of the heart and the foundations of the mind. So different from the last.

  Soldiers met him at the outskirts, skittishly eying the army at his back. But they recognized him soon enough, and loudly so. It drew up a smile to see them, these opposites—the very youngest and eldest Verdan seemed to offer. Those men time could not align for war.

  “It is good to see you, young master. And Alviss besides,” one of the elderly said warmly. He addressed Rurik, but his eyes were for the northman, and he made no qualms about offering him a hand. Kuric though he was, Alviss was a figure here large as any other—and a place like Verdan was slow to forget its legends. No doubt they had mourned more for his loss than Rurik’s, when the day of exile had come. “Your sister’ll be beside herself when she hears you are about.”

  The word struck the false smile clean from him. Rurik all but sprang at the man in his eagerness. “My sisters? Anelie? Liesa? They’re here?”

  “Sister,” the old man repeated. “Lady Liesa, begging your pardon. Or her erstwhile ladyship, as the good count does call her. She’s been kind to us, lo these months—that business with your father aside. My condolences on that, lord—you have heard, yes?”

  “I—” He knew the words he wanted to say, but it was as if he had suddenly been stricken dumb. Rurik nodded and turned aside. Your ghost, he whispered to his own grim mind.

  One of the younger guards stepped in, apparently discontent to leave things so civil. “If only you had not brought an army with you,” the youth said blandly, “you might have met your brother as well.”

  “Isaak?” He lives? How his heart leapt at the thought. Tessel had named them all dead—how had so many survived? Cullick was not so generous.

  “Nay. Ivon. He sat your father’s house, till the arms’ rattle grew too near. Headed south—to spare us, says he. But Liesa stayed, aye. Someone had to, says she. Brave lass. Braver than some.”

  He let that slide. Ivon. So he was alive too. A day for good news all around. Rurik thanked the men for it, trying to keep the tormented bliss from his voice, and looked out on his town. For all the life within, Rurik knew, still one ghost walked its streets, waiting for him. He closed his eyes and spoke to a man too long beyond him.

  Father. I’m home.

  Chapter 15

  The world seemed, for all its promise, to be bearing down on the house of Durvalle. The court was in chaos, and the courtiers with it, and so they turned that chaos on Leopold and his family. From terrified peasants to petty lords and even the high dukes, everyone seemed to wish a pull on the Emperor’s ear.

  He knew not what to make of the reports he was getting. There had been skirmishes at the border with Usteroy—some petty lords getting ahead of themselves, no doubt, and it was said that there were already reprisals springing through the villages of the heartlands. The Empress Dowager was in the south. The Empress Dowager was in the north. No one knew where the Empress Dowager was. Everywhere the song of Farrens and the howls of the Orthodox. Blood ran in the streets and man or woman, religious fool or noble dog, they blamed their emperor.

  And why not? He was the father of the nation, and they his children. Even where his eyes did not reach, nor his hands touch, it remained his fault, because he had not guaranteed his eyes or hands could reach there. Leopold was in over his head, and though Ersili met daily with the council to try and stem the tide, no amount of words seemed enough to stay the madness.

  Opportunistic fool that he was, his father’s bastard had ridden in on the chaos like an avenging wind. Neither Othmann nor the damnable Effisians had caught him, and now the council quaked from what he had brought to the shaded copses of Momeny—that easternmost hold of the Idasian Empire. Decades in the building, and in one fell swoop the Bastard had smashed the Hammer and scattered Scheyer’s forces to the wind. Oberroth, that last bastion of civilization, was said to have burned like Kimlia of old, with worse atrocities committed in the flames.

  Only two goods had come of it. Such barbarity had been enough to unite the beleaguered old nobles behind their emperor, and sufficient to divide the Farrens. Where Tessel had been hailed as vengeance incarnate, this atrocity had—through word of mouth aided by royal messengers—colored their views of him. Some still drew to him, of course—peasants mostly—but the great northern lords, the merchants, the craftsmen, and those newly ennobled creatures Matthias had once called his “faithful few,” still leant their blades to Cullick. All Leopold had to do was guarantee the two men never met, nor saw the benefits of clasping arms.

  If they did, Idasia would surely burn, and his household with it.

  With that in mind, he had at last recalled the Idasian navy from its blockade of Effise. Hopefully, they would be enough to crack open the northern cities and restore the lifeline of the river Klein. If not, it meant at least more bodies for the defense of the capital. A matter of days and he would know one way or the other.

  At the council’s urging, he had put away the old emperor’s littlest daughter into safer hands than his. There was no mention of it to his wife—she would have simply killed the girl, out of sight and out of mind. Their own children, against his own heart’s cry, were sent to the church at Blassenberg, and through it, south with the Inquisition to the border of Ravonno. The south was loyal. They would be safer there. Away from this nest of vipers.

  Away from the visions of the huntress—the curse men whispered of on starless nights.

  For more than a month, he toiled at his so-called duties, trying to make sense of it all, and not always in vain. Armies were at the march from Ravonno, arms and supply from Walim and the isles of Karnush, while sellswords swelled in from the world over.

  If only that old fool in Effise had done his duty and caught the Bastard early. Then again, I suppose it’s no good wondering at what might have been.

  If only the dreams had not tormented him so, he might have been able to deal with the lot. As it was, he hardly slept. When his children began to whisper of the same—of dreams of some shade, wreathed in fire, hunting down the old gryphon—the final line was crossed. A feeling his so-called family apparently shared.

  Long before, his siblings took to flight. For all their oaths, they would not remain within Anscharde. It was too close to Usteroy, they said, too indefensible and too close to the war. They would retire to the coasts, to their scattered holdings, or south and west to Dexet, and their great nephew there. None whispered of the ghost that seemed to cling to their castle, but it was there all the sa
me. They feared blades, but they feared the darkness all the more.

  Promises, promises. Everyone made promises. Few kept them. They had their priorities and that was just the way of it. Men could say many things, but they meant few of them.

  It was different with the witch, or so Leopold’s beloved claimed. His wife stood beside him at their table, holding his hand as this latest witch spread her hands across the fabrics she had laid. She smiled at him, mouthing assurances through the silence. But for Bertold and the witch, they were alone. Leopold smiled back at Ersili and let her certainty ease him.

  Magic, at least, was something real. Perhaps not something that could be tamed, but something real, and something powerful. Bertold was proof enough of that. With luck, the witch—Duša—would be as well. Let the Church and his fellow priests damn it all they would. It had its uses, in moderation.

  As now, in the guarantee of a life: his.

  “Are we ready to begin?” Bertold asked, face locked in a perpetual frown.

  Leopold nodded, gripping his wife’s hand a little tighter. The excitement was dizzying. Never had he done anything like this before—that is, before the procession of witches. At first, it had seemed silly. Almost pointless. What man feared when steel and stone could protect? Yet he was no fool. Three brothers and a chancellor all dead under mysterious circumstances. It could have been a conspiracy. Others had whispered of it. Truth be told, it had haunted him every step of the way from Ravonno. The Empress Dowager certainly had cause. Her, or Cullick.

  But even he felt the darkness lurking about their halls, and it bore no human shape. Ever since the first has-been of a witch, the first séance, he could almost feel it on his shoulders. Waiting. Watching.

  The spirit. Or whatever it was. Something stalked his family. It was stalking him. Bertold had felt it, though he never said as much—like a good hound, it was in the way he tensed his shoulders at certain moments, the tiny eyes rounding about his person. Some men might have put that off to nerves, or something lesser. Leopold could see the truth, though. He knew when things did not add up, and Bertold had confirmed that much, at least.

  As the witch bowed her head, he thought of Joseph and wondered. They said a fire had taken him. In the middle of nowhere, a fire had swept his flesh away and left him a husk. Mere ashes in the soiled snow. What could do that? Nothing human. Nothing real. He glanced to his bodyguard and back to his wife, and tried to breathe. This witch would fix it. Or they would turn her out as they had the others.

  Then he could deal with real things. Like a bastard overstepping himself, and a Farren whore threatening his nation with damnation. The Patriarch’s letter lay still crumpled on the floor. It called his very capabilities to question.

  For all that, he wished for nothing more than to be able to scratch the itch on his forehead. Bertold had actually slapped his hand when he tried. Soot stained that flesh now, as it did all of them, and he could not help but feel juvenile for it. In the priesthood, of course, one was accustomed to having all manner of things smeared across the flesh, but there one had the added benefit of spiritual connection, and the knowledge that it would be only a fleeting show.

  The only guarantees he received here were via his bodyguard’s icy looks. “For the magic,” the grouse assured him of the soot. Surelia actually seemed charged by it. Less so when Bertold began to smear ashes on the walls, too. Leopold smiled as he patted her hand. It was the little things.

  Like the bath that will be necessity after this. If these northerners might be troubled to draw one.

  Bertold wove his wards about the room, stepping around the table as Duša began to chant. Only once did his concentration break, as the witch’s eyes moved to him, and there, then, Leopold caught the barest, fleeting hint of a scowl. Bertold did not approve of their choice. He would never say as such, but for all the things that Bertold was, Leopold could read him like an open book. The man put too much stock in his own power. Too little in others’.

  Soon, even he would see.

  “Breathe, Your Majesty. This is very important. You must clear your mind of distraction,” the witch said, bobbing her gray head.

  He swallowed. “Stop…thinking?” That seemed unlikely.

  “Take my hand—and your wife, the other. The three of us will use one another. Our spirits will wash through one another’s flesh and use the power within to channel the spirit here. If you are distracted, the effort will be for naught, and at best, your spirit will ignore us.”

  Leopold opened his mouth to say something else, then stopped with a furrowing of the brow. “And at worst?”

  The witch coughed. “Are we ready?”

  Ersili gripped his hand, looking him in the eyes as she answered, “We are.”

  * *

  Something changed in the woman. Charlotte glanced up from her reading, to the woman on the bed before her. Meditations, or dreams, had carried Usuri away, somewhere far beyond the mortal coil. She had been knitting a scarf—they finally had begun to trust her again with sharp objects—and stopped, abruptly. Charlotte scarcely minded. Frankly, she felt the need to watch, but she preferred it when the woman kept her quiet. Of late, since the whispers with her coin had ceased, the woman had seemingly retreated into a shocked sort of stillness. Too many of her nurses had been scared off by such ploys. Charlotte would not fare the same.

  Not when Usuri had finally seemed to be talking sense.

  Yet the woman’s sudden lurching startled her nerves to waking. Usuri bolted upright, eyes wide. She seemed to look across the room without seeing anything there, and began to shake. Charlotte set her book aside and rose to her feet. A tap on the door saw the guardsmen enter. She feared the woman was moving toward another attack.

  But Usuri only stared. Pale fingers dug into the folds of her skirt and her body shivered.

  “What is this?”

  Inquisition was Charlotte’s nature, but commonsense held her back. Something had the woman, though there was nothing there.

  “What do you want?” the witch whispered.

  Charlotte might have thought the question directed at her—but for the scream that followed.

  * *

  The witch reached out her hand, palm open, only to crumple it into a fist of ash. Duša barked some strange tongue and spasmed under the pale light. Ersili watched her with knowing eyes. Even Bertold acquiesced to some degree, his pacing ceased beside the door. He wanted no part of this circus of freaks, as he deemed it, but he could not look away.

  The witch’s head rolled and her mouth opened, ever-so-slightly. Even that grungy Loracian skin seemed to descend into a sudden pallor. Shoulders rolled as a low moan broke the silence. It sounded like she was choking on her tongue. No more words uttered. They seemed lost to the flames she had sparked.

  “Stop this,” Bertold barked sharply. “This is no spirit and she knows not what she—”

  A force thudded against Leopold’s chest. Something rippled in the air.

  Leopold might have leapt back, if his wife hadn’t held him firm. He looked to the witch, but that woman remained—head tipped back, eyes closed. Only the slightest of shivers gave any indication to her continued breaths. Ersili’s eyes were locked on the air before them, though, in the same spot the ripple had issued from. That drew an easy breath. At the least, Leopold realized, it meant he wasn’t insane. Whatever it was, she could see it too.

  But it was Bertold that worried him. The magi’s face had all the color of a child marked for death. Fear dwelt there, where there was supposed to be nothing. Yet he stood frozen, as if he could not comprehend what he was seeing. His eyes, too, had drifted toward that point above the table. The left hand twitched, in a sign Leopold knew well from the superstitious south.

  A sign against enchantment and evil.

  Then the room began to shudder. Even this, Leopold might have passed off as something else—if Duša hadn’t chosen that moment to speak.

  * *

  Charlotte twisted from the shriek, cla
pping hands tightly over her ears. More men would come at that. They wouldn’t be long. The scream was, however, and it flooded the room even as it seized the witch’s body. Eyes widened and she seemed to go stiff, even as she clamored for her feet. They were begging eyes. Uncertain eyes.

  “No more! I won’t! I won’t!”

  Dartrek stomped forward to cut her off. “Not again. Sit you down you—”

  She made it perhaps a step before the shaking carried her away. White eyes rolled back into her head and she plummeted toward the stone. Had she struck it, she might have broken something—but Charlotte was quick. She caught her even as she fell, and gently laid Usuri down. Then she called out, fighting to hear herself over the babble that broke the woman.

  When she looked down, she saw only a woman lost—shivering against some unknown winter. Usuri’s eyes were open, but she did not speak. Not words, anyways. It was babble, save one thing.

  “See,” she said. See, see, see. Dartrek and the others had the binds in hand. Still, Charlotte pulled her head into her lap, waiting for someone that would know more, and she tried not to worry as to what would come of this. The woman haunted her dreams—made the familiar terrifying. Imagination could scarce suffice for what lay inside Usuri’s own head.

  Yet the woman, dragging her nails along the stone, would only whisper of devils. From the sounds of it, they had little interest in her life. In this, they shared her wardens’ opinions.

  * *

  She was there. Suddenly, violently, she was there.

  The magi’s hands surged into action, tearing a pouch from his belt and casting salt into the air. It struck out in a ring. A circle. Maker protect us.

  There was no shape to her. Nothing to distinguish a person, let alone a gender. But he could feel as she pushed into being—a break in the essence of their world. It was the scream that gave her away. At first, it felt like the stones had begun to hum. It sparked a primal dread in him. The witch began to sweat. Then she gargled, as the room quivered, and the very air with it.