The ground rushes towards me and I thank Herne and his horns that I chose this form. I hit the ground and my feline reflexes take up any damage that should have been.
Shaken, I race off into the night, not knowing my direction other than that it is away from my murderers. My plan went a little awry somewhere along the line.
***
I have run for a night and a day, and now night once again claims the sky. I glance behind me at the shaft of light emanating from the Lighthouse. It has shone for the past one thousand five hundred years, ever since the end of the Calcian War; it was said that the goddess Calcia plucked out her own eye so that she could watch Gatheck and protect her Heart. Nowadays the Calcians prefer to think of it as purely metaphor: the idea of Calcia injuring herself to view the world when she could just turn up whenever she desires seems ridiculous to them.
Focussing my mind, I see the faint smudge of woodland ahead slowly growing as I flit over the land towards them, though they are still some thirty miles distant.
I’ve figured I’m travelling southeast from the position of the North Point, the brightest blue spark in the sky. I don’t know the makeup of the land this side of the Gatheck Range as before I was sent to the Lighthouse I lived my whole life in and around Rudra, the great eastern city. Thinking of my erstwhile home brings the Circle of Calcia to mind. It is the Circle I fear: those who wish to convert all to their cause. At least the Descendants only wish for the non-believers to be slaughtered.
Soon I’ll be amongst the trees and safe. Its dense formation and thick canopy will protect me from any prying eyes. I just hope I don’t run into anyone in those woods.
How long am I going to have to hide there? How long before I can go home? Can I even go home? My parents sent me to the Lighthouse, so will they accept me now that I’ve escaped? So many questions and not a single answer for any of them.
1,543 days until the birth of a god
6th day of Spring-Fall, 1533
Creeping forward slowly, and keeping low to the ground. I don’t make a noise. I haven’t been seen yet, and I know I can do this. I’ve got to.
I sniff at its scent and see the relaxed muscles under its skin and hair. They are muscles that could bunch and flee with tremendous speed at any moment. I creep further still, closing in on the grazing creature. I get to the point where I think I can jump atop my unsuspecting victim.
The wind suddenly changes and it turns, sees me with a dark glassy eye, and bolts. I pursue it at breakneck speeds through the vicious woodland. Thorny bushes and low hanging branches scratch at my face and body as I chase after my prey. I ignore them and race on. I follow hard on its heels, but I don’t have the energy to keep up the chase. I crash to the moist forest floor, as a root catches my leg, and skid painfully and abruptly to a stop. My chest heaves air in after the strenuous chase.
My body burns as the blood courses through my veins and arteries. I’m tired, so tired. I’ll just close my eyes for a while, then I’ll cast again; give myself the strength to continue. I just need to rest for a while. Rebuild my magical stamina.
I’m so tired.
***
I can’t continue like this, these woods will be the end of me. But at least the woods hold a better ending for me. How can such an ending not be better, compared with the end that awaited me at the Lighthouse. At least here, amongst nature, it is peaceful. It would be silent but for the noises of animals foraging, birds flying about and singing their morning songs, and the trees talking to each other in their hugely drawn out deep creaking voices. Every sound is completely at home amongst the dense trees.
I am now at home too. This is where my final memories will be of; these woods that I cannot name. This place will take my body and return it to the air, ground, and water of Gatheck. Rudra is not my home, I have no family there. My family would not have put me in this situation.
I open my eyes. The early morning sun makes the leaves glow above me. I feel the inherent magic in the woods energising me, but it’s too little too late, I have no more desire to continue.
I lost everything when I was sent to the Lighthouse, and now I want the woods to take the last thing I have: my body. I close my eyes and let the magic go. I sense it seeping into the world around me. I know the gods will welcome me into the Summerland. I have lived as well as I could. I have lived as myself, never trying to change who I am for the sake of others. I have done everything the gods have asked of me, and so now I go to join them.
“You are in the Brangaine Woods, directly east of here is the city of Tomam. There you will find the path you should walk. We are with you, and as always, we guide you and we protect you.”
“Herne?”
My mumble evokes no answer. I don’t even have the strength to open my eyes and look at whoever has found me, but the voice was hollow, dry and deep. It was a voice of death.
I lift a hand to my head and run my fingers through my tangled hair. I barely even noticed my body painfully change back to my natural human form. I open my eyes, sit up and glance around, suddenly feeling more energetic and alive than I have in years. There is nobody in sight.
Getting up, I check for tracks; to my surprise, there are none. The only evidence I find of anyone ever being here, aside from myself, is a bundle of rough furs some five feet away. When I pick them up I feel the magic contained within them course through me, enriching my own magic and refreshing and calming my body and mind. I check them over and find that they have been sewn to fit a human.
I put the furs on which fit perfectly and instantly drive out the slight spring chill. I smile to myself. It must have been Herne; the green man of the woods, the horned god. He is my patron god after all. It stands to reason that he would look out for me.
I turn and walk east towards Tomam, full of energy and the zest of life. I can hardly believe that only moments ago I was contemplating letting go of this beautiful world. I smile to myself. I’m prepared to take on anything... Well, anything except Calcians; I’d like some time off from them.
The First Chapter
- Lys-Karalis -
96 days until the birth of a god
The 13th day of Winter-Fall, 1537
There is darkness and a musty smell. My eyes quickly grow accustomed to the dark. I see wood only inches from my face. Instinctively I know where I am. I’m in a coffin.
There must be a mistake. I’m not dead, I’m very much alive. A vague memory flits across my mind. I recall a beautiful and elegant woman. She is my wife.
My ears pick up the sounds of creatures burrowing in the ground around me. The tight confines of the casket prevent me from moving too much. A Sircless, the symbol of the Calcian faith, has been laid upon my chest. My flesh tingles beneath the religious icon.
I need to get out of here; I’ve got to find Elyse and tell her that I’m not dead. I need to tell her that I love her. Elyse! I remember her, but not who she is. Me? I can’t remember who I am! I don’t have a name. I just know I must find my beautiful wife.
A plan comes to mind. I need to break the coffin open and claw my way up through the soil. I feel confident that I can do it. I know that I can do it. It feels almost as if I was made to claw my way up from my apparent deathbed.
I place my palms flat on the dark wood in front of me and push with all my might. My hands break easily through the lid and I feel cool damp soil clinging to my fingers. I feel around the edges of the holes that I have made. The wood is soft and flaking. How long have I been down here?
The moist soil begins to fall through the holes. I withdraw my hands and bring them up to head height by passing them over my chest. As I do I knock the Sircless off and the tingling in my chest stops. Now, with my hands either side of my head, I push up on the casket lid. It lifts surprisingly easily, with all the weight of the earth on top of it. ‘Crack’.
Suddenly choking darkness envelopes me. The lid has split down the centre and I’m suffocating in soil. Nothing I can do now, just try and remain calm
and pass away peacefully. Everybody thinks I’m dead anyway.
But I panic. It’s inevitable. My nose is blocked with mud and I can’t see. I can taste the soil in my mouth. It’s over. I’ve stopped breathing.
I’ve stopped breathing. I can still move. I’m not breathing, but I can still move. I’m not in Heaven. Is this Hell? Have I died and just not realised it? But I can move. Corpses can’t move. What is happening to me? This makes no sense at all. I should be dead.
Hours pass and I just think. Could I be a vampire? I know vampires don’t breathe. But then they drink blood and I’ve got no thirst for blood. Even then, there hasn’t been a vampire attack on the Cracked Isles for many a year. Is there another explanation?
I’m not hungry and I’m not thirsty. I don’t understand what is going on. It all becomes too much and the blackness around me becomes that little bit blacker. Silence.
***
I’m clawing and pulling, slowly dragging my way up towards the surface. It is hard work, and my arms and legs feel heavy. I think I’m somehow stronger than I used to be. I still don’t understand my situation.
Perhaps a werewolf got me. Maybe I’m stronger because I’m about to change into some kind of slavering monster. But werewolves are just creatures of the past. They were wiped out centuries ago. Maybe I should just stop here until I can be sure it is daytime. But how can I be sure? Oh gods, I hope I’m alright; I don’t want to be a monster. If I waited, I could end up waiting forever.
I thrust a hand up through the earth above me. The moisture on my hand from the soil around me is cold in the light wind. I feel around and discover there is something that feels like snow, but warmer. I got married in the summer. It can’t be snow. I need to know what is going on.
I push my other arm up and gently ease my head through the ground. There is dirt in my eyes and mud in my mouth. I choke and splutter, rubbing snow into my eyes to clean the dirt and grime out of them. Snow! How long have I been down there? Two entire seasons? Is this what the goddess Calcia has intended for me? I can’t be dead. I mustn’t be dead.
I pull myself upright and stagger about a little, regaining my balance. I’m in the graveyard of my village, but it is not exactly how I remember it. Our Dirigir Oak at the bottom of the slight slope is much bigger than it was.
A Dirigir Oak stands in each graveyard of Gatheck. Each tree begins its life as a cutting from ‘The Dirigir Oak’, the tree from which all life began on Gatheck. How can I remember all of this and not remember who I am?
I think that there are more graves than there used to be too. Perhaps a plague has spread through the village in the two seasons I’ve been down there. I’ve got to find out if Elyse is okay!
I start toward the village proper when I notice a relatively new gravestone. Fresh snow is piled along its top. The name means nothing to me. I don’t even recognise the family name. It is the fact that the person died in the thirty-seventh year of the fifteenth hundred that worries me. I married Elyse yesterday in twenty-first year! What is happening to me? I run my hands over the raised dots, lines, and circles that make up the letters and numbers, hoping that it is my eyes that deceive me. I am not mistaken. I’ve got to find Elyse. This is all just some big mistake.
An idea strikes me and I stumble back down the slope to the distraught grave that was my own. I circle the headstone before kneeling in front of it. There are no markings on it. I run my hands over where the name should be, but there isn’t even the slightest bump. Why was I in an unmarked grave?
I run up to the top of the slope on which the graveyard lies and look down into the small village. Like everything else, it is grander than I remember. I run through the snow, past the archaic church, and down to the house where Elyse and I shared our first and only night, the memory of it so clear in my mind. I was so happy that night. Now I feel dead inside. If the date on the headstone is to be believed then many years have passed. Will she still love me?
The house faces right onto the road that leads up to the church. I yank open the door and look in to find a family in there, staring back at me. A babe begins to cry while the mother and father just stare at me, their mouths wide open. I must look terrible; I’ve just dug myself up out of my own grave after all. I turn to leave but a familiar voice stops me.
“Monster! You are not welcome in this house! Leave! Calcia wills it.”
The voice comes from a man of some twenty-score years that I do not know. How is it familiar to me? There is a slight moustache on his upper lip, and his skin is slick with fresh sweat, despite the coldness of the air. I have no idea who he is.
“Who are you?”
The only response I get is that the man spits at me. He has not the reach to make contact. Then he begins to recite a prayer of Calcia. I feel odd, like someone is watching me. Otherwise his prayer does not affect me. Why should it?
The woman, pretty, blonde, and probably in her mid-teens, meaning she’s more of a girl than a woman, takes the baby out of a door at the back of the room. She was shaking, barely in control of her actions.
“Where is Elyse, my wife?”
“She is gone now. You will leave this place! I will not allow you to hurt them!”
“What do you mean hurt? Where has she gone? Where is she?” I roar back, not able to control myself. I’m being accused of something I know nothing about!
“She heads north, monster, but you shall not follow her!”
Then the man charges at me, snatching a knife from the table he was sat at moments before. He holds the blade as if to stab me, but before he’s even halfway across the room my instincts kick in and I rush forward. I grab his hand with the knife, and his head, and I swing him around and let him fly into a wall. He hits headfirst and I hear a sickening crack. The man falls to the floor like a rag-doll. Dead.
- Satch -
“Bataliae is not a Hub! It never has been.”
“It was a small Hub.”
My brother and I often talk about the war as if we were actually part of it. Obviously we weren’t as it was fought about fifteen hundred years ago.
Thinking about Hubs, I take a few moments to marvel at their genius. A city would send out lines of produce to the outlying villages around it, drawing all who could fight into the city, taking the village men in exchange for the food their villages would receive. The war had practically stopped all produce on the farms outside of the villages and so the Hubs were the only way to feed the families. The Circle forces had a much harder time recruiting, having no such efficient methods, but to compensate they had larger numbers of priests.
The only difference between the Descendants of Calcia, whom my brother represents, and the Circle of Calcia, whom I represent, is that Descendants have always believed. Circle followers have come to believe.
“Meth, if Bataliae Lodge was a Hub, then I’m the Macer of Rudra.”
“Luckily for Gatheck, you’re not.”
“Exactly, and Bataliae was never a Hub. It simply doesn’t, and certainly didn’t then, have the amount of revenue and produce to be a Hub.”
My slim dark haired brother kneels, both hands on the pommel of his sword, its point six inches into the rocky frost covered ground. His eyes are down and he is praying before The Dirigir Oak.
The Descendants don’t like it when we Circle come to pray here on our pilgrimages. It is after all, currently held by Descendant forces.
I continue to re-educate my brother on the Calcian Wars and his fact-less views on the importance of Bataliae.
“Regardless of whether it was a Hub or not, the Batalian troops were worse than useless. The only time Bataliae ever won was against Miwo’s scouting parties in the Koimov Woods! And they were modest victories. They only won because of your Enlilites up north doing all the real damage,” I say, gesturing off to the north, in the direction of the very distant city of Enlil. I don’t know why I do, because I know that Meth can’t see me.
“What I don’t understand is how they could be so ineffect
ive though?” Meth asks through his silent prayer.
“Well first off, Bataliae is much smaller than the other cities, and they couldn’t support a Hub to boost their numbers. Secondly, Bataliae had practically no trained troops; they only had a few guardsmen from the Lodge, and they were made into officers. And thirdly, a lot of the Batalians didn’t actually want to fight.”
“I’ve never understood why they had so few trained troops.”
“The Batalians hadn’t fought a war since before, well, since the Fourth Land Skirmishes. When they finally had become an army, they never got any experience because whenever they turned up to a battle they were behind the Raven Legion, and they were the veteran Enlilites that fought. They were undefeatable. But the Batalians hadn’t moved with the times, and they were going up against seasoned Midiar units, seasoned Qivhors, and the Gathen.”
Meth looks up at me, his deep blue eyes asking his question for him. I answer without breaking stride.
“The Gathen were the people of the mountains, they lived solely from the land. They truly were an amazing race, but nobody knows where they went. But the point is that the Batalians got massacred.”
“But they were still a Hub.”
I know by the tone in his voice that Meth is only joking now, so we share a brief chuckle, before both of our minds focus, instead of wandering, as usual, to a long past war.
The Vampire's Heart Page 2
