At Faith's End

by Chris Galford

  “Merely he walks another road,” Alviss concluded at a deadpan.

  “No doubt a broader one than we,” Rowan said through thinned lips. “Please. Already the ground rests too dark beneath our feet.”

  Essa held her tongue, for the moment. She did not wish to, nor did she wish to take the hand Voren offered her. Instead, she took the trees for company and left the others thrashing blindly in her wake. It seemed a small and venomous justice.

  Their way was a winding one—brushing the river and receding, winding to a boggish strait where the earth dipped and the stars all but vanished from the sky. And Rowan with them. Pulling her distraught and shivering cousin from the muck by a handful of lace, Essa backtracked them to a thin line of soft dirt—small enough for a deer trail, though far less apparent to the eye. She, at least, knew it well.

  It had been her father that set its boundaries.

  At the mouth of this crooked trail lay a broken pasture, surrounded by trees and scrub and weeds, and covered in vines too long left to the damp. In the heart of this stood a crumbling cabin scarcely fit for holding its own roof. Stray limbs from wind-swept trees had collected against portions of it, while the vines and weeds encircled the rest. The door was ajar, and so were the windows, the canvas flaps that once covered them now long since nibbled away.

  How to describe the sensation? It smelled of old fires long set aside. It had the shape of a father’s rearing hand—and a bottle, oh yes, a bottle that ever drank the man down. It even possessed an owl’s eyes, and the stare that watched, forevermore, never leaving, never shifting, only piercing straight to core.

  She shuddered despite herself. Voren, mistaking it for cold, slid up behind her and offered his cloak. She countered with her best, placating smile, and let it go.

  “What is this place?”

  It would have to have been Rowan that asked. She turned, the curves of her smile drooping to a more demure sort of remembrance. Would that she could ask the same. Cousin the red-haired fop may have been, but he had never come here. Family, until exile took its hold of her, had been little more than a distant notion—a fleeting thing that took her father’s shape, and no other. Perhaps his family had known. Known the character of her father’s ghosts.

  “It is her—” Voren stopped short, spared a pained look for her, and looked aside, continuing more softly. “Was her home.” He stared off, until the touches of light struck his lips again. When he turned back, he pointed to a knot of stumps among the field, where apples used to grow. “We used to read there, remember? The Vorges…”

  The Holy Text. But more than that: salvation. The light glinted through her own heart, and threatened to straighten the curves of her lips again. Then it shuddered out again as quick. Many hours had been spent at that sad little knot of wood with Voren, teaching him the shape and tone of language. Yet before she consented to teach to others, it had been Rurik’s gift to her.

  Chigenda moved as a tiger across the field toward them. “Is good. Bog light—make east de treachery. Trees be tick, and walls…” He grunted, nodding to the old cabin. “Dey will hold de evil wind.”

  “But the river is loud here.” Alviss appraised, eyes roaming the field with a commander’s precision. “It will cover approaching feet, as it covered our own.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but the two fell to bickering at the details. Pointing out this and that to make for cover, or to set aside their tracks. Down from her feet, a voice thundered, years in the passing, and a hand took her by the hair. Little girl, little girl—she had not wished to go. Her father too spoke of cover and the hunt, and of all the things that had made this place so dear to her mother’s heart. Then, all too abruptly, the lash, the voice, the wounded pride.

  The baker, beaming as a child, stepped toward her and began to quote. “I know not what waits for me beyond the Grey Hills, but I shall go there with song in heart, for where e’er I go, its beauty shall transcend all others, and I shall lay me down and know such peace as I have never seen before. And so shall I lie, until the trumpets of eternity call me home once more.” He remembered. Her focus narrowed, and the man and boy were as one.

  The past destroyed men as sure as any blade.

  Without voice, she took his hand, feeling the pulse quicken in his wrist. But she shifted to the men beyond him. “Why did he stay? You owe me that, Alviss.”

  Conversation stilled. The pulse slowed. The bow of Alviss’s head was like the withering of many willows. “And more, child. Calm. He does this for us. You know Tessel’s threats. This is the Gorjes.”

  “So what? He led them off? A sacrificial lamb?” And in her hardened heart: does he think this changes anything? That it will redeem him? Fool. Redemption was the hope of fools and the divine.

  “He does.” The man shrugged around the question. “As he always. As he will. If he can save you, save too that child that calls herself lady…”

  Chigenda bobbed his head, considering. “Is brave. And fool. So close, both.”

  “But,” Voren said, hesitating on that note. He chewed at his lip, averting his sweating eyes as their own swept him. “But he, that is to say—if Tessel watches him, if this is about him, what makes you think Tessel didn’t watch us? Isn’t watching him now?” His gaze rose reluctantly, to pleading saucers. “They could know…”

  “What? What does he know?” Essa all but spat. It cowed the boy back down as she snatched her hand away. Her patience was worn too thin to care. “And what right does he have? Who, who has he ever saved? The idiot orders. The idiot takes. But what does he ever give? Trouble, and I’ll not—”

  “Enough.” That one word carved clean through her ramble and drew her up short as a startled animal. Not a deer. Not a mouse. Mere animal—undefined. The look that joined it kept her there, transfixed, uncertain.

  “Don’t talk to her like—”

  “A boy would lecture of boys?” The Zuti all but laughed.

  Alviss only shook his heavy head. “You do ill, girl, and you, boy, and I’ll have no more of it.”

  “But he—”

  “Find us kindle.” Even before the words had concluded, he turned from her, dismissing her as effortlessly as a noiseless night. “We speak when your head finds earth again.”

  A moment passed before she moved. It did not come easily, or without fire, but she clung to it, forced it back, drinking pride and torment as she stormed off into the night. She did not stoop to earth to gather sticks, but rather, headed for the bog, still fuming. It was not long before she heard the unsteady and rapid patters of feet behind her. She turned, all ice, but her hand never so much as breezed against her daggers.

  “Are you alright?”

  Voren stood before her, panting. There was a naked fear about him—pale, sorrowful thing—and she knew that it was for her. Whatever scathing word had sat on her tongue fled before that miserable image. It left her to recede, back into the ashes.

  “I am fine, Voren.”

  He took an unsure step toward her. “This—none of this is what you pictured, is it?” She shook her head. “No, how could it? And my mother, I know…”

  That afternoon, when they had attended the old woman, she had all but cast them from the bakery. Like a harpy, that one. She could scarcely think of a time someone had used more—and more creative—curses before other ears. Tree-striding harlot was probably one of the kindest hurled on her alone.

  She could not understand it. The bakery remained untouched. From what she could tell, the woman looked healthy enough. What’s more: she had regained a child. A dependable soul. It should have been enough.

  To think most of the abuse had been for Voren, her own son. His only crime? Leaving her alone.

  A bitter old woman. A broken old woman. But then…who ever wished to be alone? Too much has been caused by that bitter end.

  “She was upset, is all. We all deal with the silence in different ways. She’ll settle.”

  “There can be no silence around her,” the baker
grumbled stubbornly. “Even the echo of her should not let it settle.”

  “You are too harsh, Voren.”

  “Would it be different if she had struck me, Essa?”

  That did it. The chord was struck. She could see it in his eyes, feel it reflected through her own heart. Deeper she shrank, and he fell after her, mumbling rapid apologies. If she had been as Essa’s family, he had meant.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “You did.”

  “But I—”

  “Stop apologizing!” She snapped a scowl at him and waited for him to wither. There remained something there, some wiry strength she had not seen since the night he…and the kiss…He stood before her and did not wilt. Bathed in the shards of silvery light, he stepped close to her, and reached out his bony arms. “Voren…”

  “We cannot choose family. I will stop my mumbling but I—I am truly sorry, Essa. You suffer too much. It is not fair that I heap my own…”

  She squeezed his hand and twisted away, careful to step around the noxious peat. Like a faithful hound, the boy followed dutifully in her wake, matching every stride. It was a time before they spoke again, and the fumes of the bog were receding behind them, the river surging blue and dark before the glittering points of their eyes. It was a point of grounding. Familiarity. She breathed in its thick, wet scent. Few things felt this way anymore.

  “We are all of us alone, Voren. Do you know that?” Her patch of voice was all but lost in the tumult of the surge.

  She could sense the maw of him open in objection, but nothing came out. Wisdom, perhaps. She closed her eyes, let the darkness in deeper. “There are points of light, little flickers of flames that light the way, but the path…it is shadow.” What was she trying to say? She grimaced in annoyance at her own lack of voice. “Apologies. I am not the one for words, but your mother only fears the dark. As my own, I hope, so feared.”

  “That does not justify it. Any of it. Not yours. Not mine. Not Rurik…” A soft step drew him near.

  That word. “And Rurik.” She held it there a moment, let it coat the air between them. Her eyes opened and she found Voren looking warily down at the waves. “He too does what he does for fear.” It was hard to speak it, but in its utterance, she knew it for truth.

  Something tightened in the boy. He turned to her only slowly, and for the first time in that haunted place, she thought she could see the man he might become. A shape of things to come.

  The raw venom in his expression startled her. “What he did—there is no justification.”

  “We all fear the dark, Voren. Loneliness.”

  There it was again. The hand. It clasped her arm. First one, then two. They slid, captured her hands, and through some magic she could not identify, drew her eyes to his. They were of a height. He—battered, beaten, yet untainted. She—bloodied, old before her years—and still his hands folded around hers, and he looked as if he were at the verge of tears.

  “Not all of us have need to be.”

  Silence followed the weight of that. It was not that there was nothing else to say—but that there was nothing they needed to say. They walked on, along the bank, and through the trees, Essa watching everything but themselves, and Voren with eyes for nothing but. There were moments, then, when it seemed they were but children again, wandering the trees with the same lack of care. Then others came, where she saw that there was nothing of the old remaining, save the loyalty, and the kindness—there was nothing to the shape of it or to the motions of their bodies that were as things once had been.

  Years before, her mother had abandoned her in this place. Not a human, surely not a woman, that she would do such a thing. Then her father had turned her from this spot, flushed with the fury of other men, and cast them both into exile. Now it was a place a boy became a man and friendship, the last vestiges of thread tying her to this place, became…

  Something else. She could not say what. For another boy walked still beside them, and even in her darkest hours, she wept inside for all that was. What had the eyes not seen? What lay hidden?

  They were nearly back to the cabin when Voren gave her arm a halting tug.

  “And the kindling?”

  She hesitated, then with the gentlest of exhales, let a rub of a smile drift bare. “Yes. Let us not forget the kindling.”

  * *

  It was all behind them. Childhood. The awkwardness of youth. He said a prayer, and for a long time, he would not close his eyes.

  They slept entwined beneath the old boughs, tickled by grass, the smallest vestiges of fire to warm them. Clothes were not shed. Base passions were not indulged. Yet something joined them, and he knew, holding her as he did, that this—this was everything.

  Sleep came easy and dreamless. The sleep of babes.

  Emergence was warm and breathless, rough arms cradling him close. Dawn was still a notion, silver light creeping through the slots of the leaves to rain across the field in shards. Their fire had trickled to naught but embers, and even the smoke had dissipated, leaving nothing but her scent. Wood. Dirt. And Woman. It stirred his heart and blushed his cheeks; it felt, for a moment, as if all the others might look on him and know.

  As if that mattered. Here, away from people, from coin and nobility and all of society’s wanton mechanisms, with her and her alone, he knew he could be happy. He could find a way. To hell with mother. To hell with the rest. Let him have a touch and he could find a way.

  Feather-light lips pressed against the back of his skull and he stiffened, thoughts of bliss scattering swift. She wakes? He tried to turn into her, but the arms held him fast, and she mashed against him, as a child against a doll. His cheeks burned. So too, it seemed, did the sound of her voice.

  “Restless?”

  She pinched him, and he yelped to a squeal of her own girl-delight. One of her hands clapped over his mouth, but she pulled him with her as she sat upright. To his horror, Alviss sat squat across from them, head bowed but eyes like hot points of iron. If ever looks could kill…

  “I swear there’s not one of you ever grows up,” she whispered in his ear. The blush deepened, and he squirmed against her, but this only drew a deeper laugh. She shook her head into his shoulder and let the motion still him. Steadily, her hand fell from his mouth.

  He swallowed. “How—how long have we been…?”

  “Not l—”

  “Perhaps two passing notes of day,” Alviss answered for them. His head rose and revealed the bags of sleeplessness beneath hard eyes. His voice was hoarse. “Chigenda has your watch.”

  “How kind of the Zuti…”

  From behind them: “At least someone has a sense of kind. Darkness, children. Must we make so with the chatter?” Rowan groaned as he rolled onto his back. “Bad enough we take the earth for beds when there’s a house right there.”

  “With bugs enough to make your skin right-crawl, I’m sure,” Essa teased.

  “And you think the dirt lacks for them? Maker, you’re a cruel lot.”

  “Were—were you all awake?” Voren chirped.

  The silence was deafening. The proceeding laughter more so. It stilled only as Alviss, rising at a stretch, reached out to kick their dead fire and knocked a few stray sparks to light.

  Birds scattered as a gun clipped a hole in the night. A bright, fierce hole that flared the trees around it into being, and sank away again as the wood splintered at Essa’s side. Of preludes, there was none. Even she froze, she with a wolf-hound’s hearing, and the light touched her, making ink and tendrils of her hair. For an instant, she was as Voren knew she would always be: a girl made of darkness. Not a thing of the light. That clarity receded into the uncertain mooning as more shots rang out, and the wood cracked all around them.

  There was a second of indecision, splintered only by Rowan’s bewildered cry.

  Shapes sprang through the trees, little more than inky blotches in the profane silver of the night. Weapons drew tall by the shadow, only to be drunk away again by the smothering
dark. There were no whooping cries, no declarations—only murder and the means to inflict it. Smoke drifted aimless at the figures’ backs, making monsters of them.

  Demons.

  There were two more patters in the wood before the earth drew still, and Alviss swung up roaring at his assailants. Without another thought, the Kuric snatched at the axe discarded beside him, and flung himself headlong to check their rush. Quavering, Essa fell back before her cousin, shocked still beside Voren, both watching as the swordsman who had draped himself across them as the shots rained down, now recovered and stepped to meet the advance by cold steel. Voren sagged, frozen. Absently, he felt through the ashes for a log club. It was all he could muster.

  Essa’s hand was on his arm. Everything reeked of saltpeter. The sky was black. This was all he knew.

  They advanced in pairs. One man dropped as Rowan’s thin steel sunk its kiss against his breast. Others ambled aside at the turning of Alviss’s axehead, only to swarm on the backswing. Sparks traded between them like a dance of fireflies. Before them, all fell to the chaotic squabbles of the night.

  This was not the battlefield. No organization. No rules. Each struggled to kill the other, and through any means. A figure lurched through the dark to tackle Rowan, and both went shouting into the dust. This at last seemed to strike Essa, and she lurched after them, pulled from Voren’s groping hand. He saw the knives flash from her belt, the raging in and out, and darkness spray. Another rounded on her; she lurched back from a strong backhand.

  Alviss head butted a man—Voren knew it only for the fact that it was illuminated in another flash of saltpeter. Yet the only thing to crack was a man, not near but distant. Voren threw about like a man possessed, and bore witness to a shadow slinking in the trees beyond. Another—longer, thinner—darted from its wake. They were not abandoned. His night-bled eyes could see others, the long guns raise, but not to them—to the hunter, and the long limb flooding from his back. Only then were there shouts.

  A demon stalked the trees.

  The man that struck Essa lurched back as her boot found that sweet spot between his legs. Even as Essa clambered to her feet, Voren found some inner font of strength, and in the man’s weakness, swept behind him with a sharp and fevered cry, to bash him across the skull with his club. He toppled like a bag of wheat, and the air eased out of him just the same.