The Seer's Curse

by J. J. Faulks

  Piprin frowned. “What do you mean? Where am I going?”

  “You like myths, don’t you, child?” The Seer did not give him a chance to reply. “Let me tell you a story.” He scooped up the book from the altar and replaced it with an older, dustier tome.

  The pages of the book were fragile and yellowing, so delicate that with anything but the lightest touch they might disintegrate. The Seer turned the pages in front of him, revealing it to be an anthology of myths, but there was not a single story that Piprin recognised. These myths were older than any he had ever heard. Known only by the storytellers of his ancestors, they died with them, lost to time.

  As the Seer narrated, Piprin studied the pictures. His hands itched to reach out and touch the pages, to feel the aged ink beneath his fingers, but he refrained.

  In ancient times, when the gods of Earth, Water, Air and Fire were still in their youth, there existed two lesser gods who roamed this world. One was Faes, god of Treachery. The other was Vros, god of Wrath. Faes and Vros fell in love with the same wood nymph. Both were arrogant, both were stubborn. Neither was willing to part with their love, so they challenged one another to fight for the right to be united with her. Their fight was long and bloody, and they did not care for the devastation they caused. Ultimately, they were banished to the Afterworld to rule over the dead as their penance for the chaos they inflicted upon this world.

  Their final battle took place in a field in the Land of Mortals. The blood of the two gods was shed on the flowers of the field, turning the petals from purest white to darkest red. To this day, the flowers remain stained with the blood of the warring gods.

  *

  “It is said,” the Seer said, “That the blood of Faes and Vros lives on in the flowers of the battlefield. If you were to express the juice of those crimson petals and to wear it around your neck—” the Seer held out his fist and as he unclenched his hand he released a small silver vial from his palm. It was empty, waiting to be filled by the juice collected from the flowers. The vial hung from a chain that was laced through the Seer’s fingers, glinting before Piprin’s eyes. “—it might ward off the creatures in the Great Forest, granting you access to the Land of Gods.”

  “Might?” Piprin questioned sharply, his eyes following the pendular swing of the silver vial. It was a pivotal word.

  “No one else knows about the origin of these flowers,” the Seer said. “So no one has ever harvested the juice and used it to travel to the Land of Gods. If you decide to go, you will be the first. That’s the risk you take. The question is: how badly do you want to rescue Orleigh?”

  Piprin’s gaze shifted to the Seer, his eyes narrowing as his teeth clamped down on the inside of his cheek. The old man’s intentions were as unreadable as his face. It was like he was wearing a mask. Piprin held out his hand. He shivered as the cool silver dropped into his palm.

  The Seer offered him a smile that made the hairs of his neck stand on end.

  Piprin looped the thin link chain around his neck. “Where will I find the battlefield?”

  The Seer pointed to one of the many staircases that led away from the cave. It stood between a woven tapestry depicting the Creation and a bookshelf lined with clusters of bright purple amethysts and rocks embedded with veins of gold.

  “Take those stairs,” he said. “They will lead you to a path on the other side of the mountain. Follow the path until you come across a woodland. The battlefield lies in a valley beyond the trees.”

  Clambering to his feet, Piprin gave a hesitant bow and murmured, “Thank you.” He was already halfway to the stairs when the Seer called after him.

  “And beware the men that guard the field. They are very protective of their crop.”

  Piprin hesitated mid-step. “What men? What crop?” he asked as he turned back to face the Seer, but the Seer had abandoned the altar and retreated from the cave, his footsteps echoing into the silence.

  The staircase meandered its way up through the mountain. Though punctuated by lanterns that hung from the walls, the corridor remained dim. There was no end in sight, as each corner gave way to a new stretch of stairs. Piprin plodded on until eventually the passage divided into a fork. There was no discernible difference between the left branch and the right branch. With no cue to guide him, he plumped for the left branch.

  At first, the left branch appeared no different to its parent; however, after rounding a few corners, traces of writing appeared on the walls. It started with letters and symbols, progressing to individual words, swelling into great rivers of text. Different streams of paragraphs merged together, forming a chalky estuary at the entrance to a blind cave.

  The floor of the cave was bare, but every last space on the walls was covered in chalk. Amongst the writing there were sketches and diagrams, often overlapping in places and only distinguishable by the differing colours of their chalk. They depicted plans for contraptions, intricate studies of anatomy, detailed artwork, timelines and charts. The cave was like a mind laid bare on the rock.

  Piprin turned slowly at the centre of the cave, his mouth open as he gazed at the walls, craning his neck to the map of the stars that masked the domed ceiling. He drank in every scribble and scrawl. A person could spend a lifetime in that cave and never tire of its information.

  Wrestling with the pull of the room, he retreated into the corridor, walking against the flow of words until they ran dry. He diverted onto the right branch, and drifted towards daylight.

  The passage opened onto a high plateau, cut into the opposite side of the mountain to the entrance. A path wound down from the plateau to the base of the mountain. Piprin stumbled along the gravelled track, blinking in the bright sunlight.

  Halfway along the path, a small building was hidden amongst the trees. The inscription outside, grooved into the arch of the doorway, read:

  “Many paths, one fate.”

  Piprin paused, taking a swift glance around before ducking inside. The interior was covered in bones. Row upon row of limb bones, stacked like rungs of a ladder, reached up to the ribbed ceiling, and human skulls studded the arches. The sight of so many bones and the words of the inscription embedded themselves in his mind, reappearing every time that he blinked. It was a timely, if macabre, reminder of his fragility.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The path that led away from the mountain was well-travelled and, once he had descended from the mountainside, Piprin blended into the throng of traffic. The bustle carried him to a nearby village. Here, most of the travellers stopped. The market was bubbling with the cries of traders, and streams of laughter overflowed from the tavern. The warmth of the village called to him, luring him with promises of hearty meals and comfortable beds, but he stuck to the main path, continuing onwards beyond the houses. On the other side, the path was far quieter.

  Follow the path until you come across a woodland, the Seer had said. There were endless fields, rippling in the rise and fall of hills, but no woodland. The path stretched on before him, interrupted only by its crests. He looked back at the village, now fading into the distance. The sun was already sailing towards the horizon. Perhaps it would have been wiser to stopover in the village after all.

  A kind-faced woman with a soft, sing-song voice approached from the opposite direction, a young girl skipping about her feet. Piprin waved to them, offering them a friendly smile. “Hello!” he called. “Can you help me? I’m looking for a woodland. Well, I’m looking for a field of flowers, but I was told that it lies beyond the woodland. Have you seen it?”

  The woman bore into him with cold eyes, and a protective hand brought her child closer to her side. Her tone sharpened as she ushered the girl on. “Quickly, darling. This way.” She scowled at Piprin, but said nothing.

  “What did that man want, mummy?” the little girl asked, tugging on her mother’s hand.

  “Nothing, darling,” the woman said in a hushed v
oice. “Let’s keep walking. Quickly now.” And they disappeared down the soft slope of the hill.

  There was no luck to be found with the other travellers that he encountered either. No one was willing to point him in the right direction. As soon as he mentioned the woodland, they refused even to acknowledge him. The most he got out of one man was a terse exchange.

  “We’re good folk around here,” the man muttered. “We don’t want nothing to do with no woodland, nor any flowers that may or may not lie beyond it.”

  Piprin frowned to himself. “What’s wrong with the flowers? Why won’t anyone help me?”

  As he marched into the late afternoon, his footsteps grew slower and heavier. Kraion had sailed for thirty days and thirty nights to save his daughter. Would he have to walk this path for just as long to find the flowers and save Orleigh?

  “I will not give up.” The mantra spurred him on the last few strides that carried him to the summit of yet another hill. He used the elevation to scope out the surrounding land. In the distance, beneath the dipping sun, was a stretch of woodland capped with a blood red glow.

  “The battlefield,” he smiled. Relief tingled through him, washing away the ache from his legs. It felt like the moment he caught sight of home after a tiring journey with his father.

  A narrow, rock-strewn track branched off from the main path and led across the fields towards the woodland. Following it took him down into a shallow valley before making a sharp ascent up into the trees. He hid amongst the line of trees that overlooked the bowllike valley beyond, shielding himself in their shade.

  The old battlefield with its blood red flowers occupied the bottom of the basin. With grass-strewn but otherwise bare slopes descending towards it, the field was easy to defend. Any intruder attempting to reach the field and its crop would be spotted as he made his way down from the trees. Waiting to catch any such intruder were five men, the men that the Seer had warned him about.

  A light breeze lifted a waft of the flowers’ scent to where Piprin stood. It hit him like a wave crashing against the shore. Sickly sweet, thick and smokey. His stomach lurched and stars studded his eyes, blurring his vision. Crouching down, his hands groped for the ground and he lowered his head to the earth.

  His mother’s voice swam through his mind, “Piprin, Piprin, Piprin!” Glimpses of Orleigh’s room bombarded him, and his mother said, “Orleigh’s gone.”

  As the scent weakened, his strength returned. The memory faded like a summer morning mist yielding to the heat.

  The flowers themselves were bedded at the centre of the basin, surrounded by a generous perimeter that the guards patrolled with strict regularity. The flowers were huge—bigger than any crop that he had seen before—with dark green stalks thicker than a man’s thigh. Leaves like the hands of a giant sprouted from the stalks, extending outwards and joining those of the neighbouring plants to create a dense mesh. The prized flower heads had deep crimson petals with smooth, semicircular bases and frayed upper edges that overlapped to form bowls that cradled the fading sunlight.

  The men had set up camp beside the field. Five conical tents fashioned from animal skins and wooden poles gave them shelter. A small bonfire bordered by log benches provided them with a place to congregate when they were not patrolling the crop. Whilst one man paced the perimeter, a wooden club swinging from one hand, the other four men sat around the campfire, passing a smouldering stub between themselves. They took it in turns to fill their lungs with the fruit of their crop, sharing rambling stories and raucous laughter.

  There was a pattern to their patrol. Each man walked a set number of laps of the field before passing on the baton to the next guard. They were at their most distracted during the changeover. Piprin could take advantage of this when night fell and the time came to make his approach.

  The sun sank below the horizon and one by one the stars pinpricked the sky with a constellation of myths. The men lit their torches from the flames of the campfire.

  As one patrol came to an end and another guard took over, Piprin began his descent through the wild grass of the slope, keeping low to the ground. At first the incline was sharp, and fearing that too much haste would cause him to trip and tumble over his own feet, he began by crawling bear-like towards the field. The grass swished around him, swelling and breaking like the tide. Ahead of him, the torchlight set off from the camp and began to pace around the perimeter. The slope softened and, rising off his hands, Piprin’s strides quickened. Even in the darkness he felt exposed, as if he had a light of his own hanging over his head, summoning the guard.

  The guard was just about to round the corner onto the side of his approach when Piprin dashed across the perimeter and slipped into the mass of flowers. He crouched to the earth and crept further into the field through the ranks of stems, holding his breath until the man’s footsteps breezed past. He had not been spotted. Not yet.

  Crawling beneath the broad leaves, Piprin ventured deeper into the field. The flowers, entangled in their handshakes, choked the moonlight and buried themselves in darkness. Piprin could no longer see the flames of the torch dancing at the edge of the field, and after turning round a few times he could no longer remember which direction he had come from.

  Piprin rose to his feet, brushing the leaves away from his face. He took a piece of flint from his pocket, his thumb finding the honed edge. It was sharp enough to carve through flesh. Reaching up on his tiptoes, his hand wrapped around the stem of one of the plants, steadying the flower head as he began to saw through it. Tiny hairs prickled beneath his palm and, as he sliced through layer after layer, sticky juice seeped from the open stem, stinging his hands. He was itching to let go, to rub at his irritated skin, but he gritted his teeth and kept hacking away until the last fibrous strand was severed.

  The flower head with its precious petals toppled from the stem, falling through his fingers and landing on the soil with a thump.

  “What was that?” A sharp yet muffled voice found its way through the plants.

  Piprin froze, his breath stuck in his chest. He clutched the flint in front of him, sharp edge bared, ready to strike.

  “I thought I heard something,” came the same voice again.

  Cold sweat clung to him and his heart beat so hard that he was sure that the guards would hear it. His lips parted in a silent prayer, “Don’t let them find me. Please don’t let them find me.”

  “I can’t see anything,” another said. “You must be imagining things again.”

  Piprin waited, straining to hear the men. There was a disgruntled murmur and then nothing. Everything was still. He lowered the flint and scooped up the flower head from the ground, stashing it in his bag. He selected a second plant to harvest, slashing the stem fast and deep, his hands ready to catch this time. He did not know how much juice a single flower head would yield, but he was not willing to risk the chance of there being too little. Entering the old battlefield once was dangerous enough; there would be no returning once he had left.

  With no way to tell which direction would lead him to the shelter of the woodland and which would deliver him to the campsite, Piprin set out at random, weaving his way through the flowers. Gradually, the plants began to thin, warning him that he was nearing the edge of the field. He peered through the leaves, but there was no glow of campfire.

  As he hid behind the final line of plants, he stuck his head out from the field and glanced up and down the perimeter. There was no sign of the patrolman or the other guards. He pushed past the leaves and snuck across the border, feet padding on top of the grass. He had made it halfway to the start of the slope when a glimmer of fire appeared in the corner of his eye.

  An arrow of fear pierced his stomach. The light of a single torch was rounding the corner. The woodland, which had appeared so close only a moment before, rolled away into the distance, whilst the dark tendrils of the plants reached out, clawing him back into the
field.

  On hands and knees he pushed his way back into the maze, but the stems of the flowers blocked his path, like soldiers standing tight in their formation. He battled his way through, the plants fighting back and lurching all around him. Leaves rustled and stems groaned, calling out to the guards to protect them.

  A cry echoed throughout the basin. “Thief! Thief! Thief!”

  The torch tumbled to the floor. Footsteps pounded the grass.

  “Quick! This way! He’s over here!”

  Piprin ran. He thrashed through the stems, forearms shielding his face as he hurtled deeper and deeper into the field. Leaves slapped at his skin, pinching his flesh.

  “Faster! This way!”

  The shouts hounded him, growing from a rumble to a roar. Glancing behind him, there was nothing but thick foliage swaying in his wake, shielding him and trapping him.

  “Faster,” he pleaded with his legs, “Run faster.” But they refused and the ache in his side screamed a stubborn ‘No!’.

  You are smart, the Seer had said, Know your strengths, know your weaknesses, act accordingly.

  He could not outrun the men, but perhaps he could outsmart them.

  Piprin stopped and, leaning forward, he gasped for breath. His stomach clenched, threatening to turn itself inside out. All around him, the plants stilled.

  “Where’d he go?” one of the guards shouted.

  “I can’t see,” a second called back. “The flowers have stopped moving.”

  “Do you think he escaped?”

  “No. He’s in here somewhere.” A chuckle shook through the field. “I think we’ve got ourselves a game of cat and mouse.”

  Piprin’s skin crawled, and a shudder spread from the tip of his spine right up to the base of his neck. Changing direction, he set off again, weaving through the plants as if he were stepping through the strands of a spider’s web. Run, run, run, reverberated through him, but he clenched his fists and, steadying his breath, he continued at his achingly slow pace.