by Scott Hale
The borders of the Nameless Forest were opened shortly thereafter, and the goddesses descended from ascendance to live amongst mortals. They shared their findings with those who could put them into practice, and prayed to the greatness of the Blue Worm in the morning and at night.
The fruits of the women’s labors, however, were quick to spoil. The children, who were once so promising, began to turn, on themselves at first, and then others. They tore and ate their own skin, and wore the skin and skulls of those who tried to stop them. Mortified, their revered mothers rallied together to put an end to the slaughter, but the children―the flesh fiends, those terrors—fled into the wilds, leaving behind half-empty towns and half-eaten villages.
Enlightenment soon gave way to idiocy, and the women of the Nameless Forest were rounded up, for the people felt fooled by their promises. The women’s methods were questioned and the answers they gave ignored. Upon learning of their encounter at the red island, the women were fixed to a pyre at the Forest’s border and burned alive, until nothing remained but their ashes and the worms that had swum in their bellies. Those that attempted to catch the worms failed, and by their failings, their arms were colored crimson, for crimson had been the worms’ color before they disappeared into the earth.
Audra was still alive, of that Edgar was certain. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to his feet. Hot, sickening pains from the crooked cuts and gouges left by the barbed wire flared throughout his body. He tried to grab the ball of steel that closed around that imposter Audra. Before his fingers could close around it, the orb sank into his supposed sister’s blood and disappeared. Edgar ignored the urge to dig after it, for the urge was what the Forest surely wanted, and went ahead.
The church sat atop the land, a crumbling mass of spires and glass. The walls that held it together shook and shivered as the bells bellowed a death-knell drone. Had this been the same sound he had heard that killed the carrion birds? He winced, the deep rumblings vibrating his chest and head. Covering his eyes to block out the sun, he saw that above the great, battered doors, the word ‘Anathema’ had been written in brown and black.
He gripped his sword. “This is a village?” Then he started up the church’s front steps.
Like all places haunted and horrible, the doors of Anathema opened on their own. Edgar proceeded cautiously into the church.
As soon as he crossed the threshold, the bells stopped. Sunlight poured through the stained glass windows above, creating pockets of color by which he could navigate this dim place. Pews like mouths full of splinters grinned as he pressed further in. Fallen candles like melted hands reached out of the floor, as though to grab him. A cold wind rolled off the balconies overhead, the stink of rot adhered to it.
He pulled his cloak close, covered his nose, and though every part of him begged him to turn around, he went forward.
When he reached the back of the church, where the wall had sagged and become host to a mess of Stinging Chrism, his nose picked up another scent. He circled the altar here, where it sat swaddled in dusty, dirty sheets, and noticed several cracks at its base. Through them, a warm breeze blew, and rather than rot, it carried the smell of wine and fresh food. He leaned in closer, mouth salivating, stomach growling—too starved to think much of the fact that the sheet that covered the altar had stood up on its own.
But then the spell broke, and he stumbled back, shouting, “Holy Child!” as the dirty sheet fell and revealed a robed man with yellow eyes beneath it.
“Stop, stop,” he shouted, as the figure stepped off the altar, his robes streaming like water around him.
“I’ll call the others up and tell them you’ve come,” the robed man said. He hurried off, slipped into an alcove, and climbed the ladder there.
Edgar stood by the hollowed-out altar, dumbstruck. The man padded away, deeper into the church.
“Fuck this,” he said, stepping away from the altar. “I’m not staying here like an—”
The church trembled as the bells began to rock again high above. It was a signal, he realized; a signal to others unseen that a trespasser had arrived.
Edgar had failed his task, and so, like most failures, he turned on his heels and fled. As he ran down the center aisle, red robed beasts rose out of the pews. He drew his sword, swinging back and forth to keep them at bay. Pale fingers grabbed at his hands and face. He kicked the nearest red hooded horror, and it went whirling into the shadows.
A raspy chant swelled behind Edgar as he hurried toward the front doors. He sheathed his sword and covered his ears to deafen the words, but the words found him all the same. Like hooks, they clung to him, and like hooks they reeled him in.
He was yanked backward, his skull smacking against the floor. His arms shot out and his legs went limp. Like spoiled children, the congregation dragged him across the church, opening old wounds and creating new ones as he bashed and scraped against the deathtrap pews. With one forceful tug, the robed figures chanted him into the air, throwing him against the altar, where he crumpled, powerless to stop them.
“Shouldn’t have run,” he heard the robed man with the yellow eyes say, somewhere nearby. “Let’s have a look at you.”
Invisible strings from the strung-together words lifted Edgar and left him to dangle in midair. He held on tightly to his sword. He cursed and screamed, but that was about all he could do. Surrounded, outnumbered, the forlorn lord of Eldrus drifted above a sea of black and red robes and pointed hoods, the waves of their infernal chant keeping him afloat. Fifteen, twenty—Edgar counted the congregation and, out of character, considered how difficult it would be to kill them all.
“Who are you?” a member of the church asked. “What do you want?”
Edgar’s mouth started to water again at the smell of the freshly baked bread and picked fruits. He closed his eyes, told himself the sensations were nothing more than conjured temptations.
“Was that you out there?” someone else asked. “Was that you in the fields? I think… I think Crestfallen has spared this man.”
A murmur meandered through the cloth. Edgar struggled against his ghostly bindings, and salivated at the hints of cooked meat Beneath his feet, there were small slivers of orange light now coming through the cracks in the church’s floor. A force tugged on his wrist, and he dropped his sword to the ground.
“Well, that’s different. That’s something to consider,” a third man said. “A messenger, perhaps? What do you think he has to say?”
The cracks in the floor were starting to spread throughout the church, widening into sizeable fissures. It was as though hell itself were pushing through the holy ground. He heard a ruckus, a clanging of pots and pans. Fork and spoon, too, scraping against a plate, thudding against a bowl.
“Ask him, ask him,” a fourth, high-pitched voice shrieked, piercing the ongoing chant. “Just get on with it and ask him!”
Edgar bit his tongue to avoid its loosening, and then he bit into it, drawing blood, as the orange cracks split the floor and pushed pulpits of stone into the air. The congregation stood unyielding as their place of worship was pulled apart like a puzzle; the orange light, now much darker and deeper, spilled over from below, and drowned the church in that hellfire glow.
“Bring him under,” a voice commanded from that terrible place. “Bring him to me.”
It took everything Edgar had not to beg. He didn’t want the congregation to know how cowardly he was.
One by one, the robed figures turned their backs. When they did, the chant ended and Edgar fell. He flailed wildly, hands grasping for purchase on the slick, separated flooring. In seconds, the orange light had enveloped him. Before he could make sense of what was happening, he crashed into the ground, blowing all the air out of his lungs.
“Fuck,” Edgar wheezed. He scrambled to his feet, and grabbed his sword off the ground. Batting away the orange smoke of this underground place, he chattered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He was in a kitchen. Blazing ovens lined the roo
m, the smoke they exhaled causing the orange oddity that filled the place. Every type of food that could be cooked was cooking over the roaring flames.
Seeing that, an immense hunger unlike any Edgar had ever known overcame him and, like so many stupid children from so many fairytales, he gravitated towards them, and certain obliteration.
“Leave it,” the commanding voice from before boomed. A jagged shadow stood in the swirling smoke at the furthest end of the kitchen.
“That’s not for you, not yet.”
Edgar cleared the spit, vomit, and fear from his throat, and said, “I seek the ruler of… Anathema.”
“Here I stand,” the jagged shadow said. “The Woman in White sent you to us. We heard you were coming.”
Edgar nodded.
“Is the food not good enough? Is the drink not as she wants it? Who is not satisfied with our offerings? Chapel did not receive the last shipment, this I know and need not be told. The Whore of Threadbare, that’s it, isn’t it? What did she say?”
In disbelief over the man’s trust in him, Edgar just smiled and shook his head. “Blackwood, Atlach.” He only mentioned those villages, because the man had not.
The jagged shape came out of the smoke, to show itself to Edgar. He, too, like his brethren, was clad in black and wore a red, pointed hood. But now that he had the light, and a little less fear in his system, Edgar could see that the man, and likely those above, were not beasts at all; this one was an old man with one eye and a cleft lip.
“They have never wanted food before. Is this what she asks of us? It’s not, is it? I can tell it isn’t. Praise God. You’re a wicked man. Tell me, tell me what’s brought you here.”
Edgar, having suddenly shifted from being a victim to being victorious, was at a loss for words. Finally, he managed to say: “To discuss supply and demand, and dispersion.”
The ruler of Anathema nodded with every syllable.
“To discuss this place and your needs.”
The last part must have won him over, because he introduced himself. “Father Silas. Welcome to Anathema, Blood of the Cloth.”
What that title meant, Edgar couldn’t be sure, but it was clear to him that something was wrong with Father Silas. He trusted Edgar as though he had known him for years, and his desperation to be in Crestfallen’s good graces blinded him to the fact that she had sent Edgar here to kill him.
The ruler of Anathema led him through the length of the kitchen, and then the larders, garden, winery, and well—all of which was subterranean. The church was not a village, Edgar realized during his tour, but a factory for all things needed to live comfortably in the Nameless Forest. Why would Crestfallen want Father Silas murdered, then? Would it not destroy what little harmony existed between the settlements?
Silas had started bringing Edgar topside, and now they were following a staircase up to the roof.
“Supplies are sent out monthly.” He stepped off the final staircase and pushed open the door there.
The sudden blast of light temporarily blinded Edgar.
Going through the door, onto the roof and their loose tiles, Silas said, “Five paths, do you see them?”
Rubbing the sun out of his eyes, Edgar said he did. Five paths, like five splayed fingers. They ran from the palm that was Anathema.
“They are safe roads. Narrow, not well maintained. Easy to stray from, even if you’ve traveled them all your life.” Silas stopped, and when he did, the bells finally stopped booming, too.
Pointing from left to right, Silas said, “To Chapel, to Threadbare.” His eyes became as dark as his tone. “That goes to Blackwood, the other, Atlach.”
Edgar fingered the hilt of his sword. They were alone on the parapets. If he wanted to kill Silas, he could. “What about the last path?”
“I don’t know.” Father Silas turned around and headed back toward the stairs. “It’s not a safe path. No one goes down there anymore. Wait, over—” he pointed to the church’s annex, where several members of the congregation were towing boxes onto a wagon, “—over there. That’s the next shipment.” He sighed. “It’s really been hundreds of years since someone last visited.”
Father Silas smiled. He lunged forward and ripped Edgar’s sword out of its scabbard. Turning it around, he ran it through his own stomach and pushed the blade into his guts and out his back.
“What are you doing?” Edgar cried. He reached for the sword, but Father Silas twisted away. “Holy Child, let me help you!”
The priest screamed. The flesh on his face started to melt, the glimmer of his appearance running down his robes. Beneath his skin, another face, beaked and scaled, like a lizard’s, like a bird’s, was there. Great, mottled wings tore outward and stretched through slits in the back of his robe. A second mouth, a chomping umbilical cord of hungry muscle, bit through the front of the garment and snapped at the air.
Carrion bird. Except this one was much larger than the others. Edgar wrestled the sword out of Father Silas’s bleeding hole and put several steps between him and the creature.
“You’re Blood of the Cloth,” Father Silas hissed. Talons burst through his fingernails. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know what that is!” The torso mouth snapped forward, trying to bite Edgar, as though it had a mind of its own. “What is going…? Do they know you’re like this?”
Father Silas, despite having lost all his human features, seemed stunned by this. “We’re all carrion birds here. It’s our curse, our way to redemption.” He clicked his talons on the roof tiles. “Is this a test? Don’t you know? Maybe you shouldn’t be here.”
Edgar leaned over the edge of the roof. Those below were oblivious as to what was happening above, continuing to fill the wagon with the supplies they were hauling out of the church. He returned to Father Silas. If he hesitated, the priest could take flight and flee, or summon his congregation to tear Edgar apart.
Father Silas was already halfway to Death, but if he finished him off, and if he hadn’t truly deserved it, then he would have the man’s blood on his hands for the rest of his days.
“Why did you stab yourself?”
Father Silas snapped his beak. “You, was it you they saw days ago?” Father Silas cocked his head. He retracted the torso mouth back into his blood-drenched stomach. “You, and the dead man. You, you, you!” His wings started to flap in agitation. “You are disgusted by me? I know why you are here.”
Edgar pointed the sword at the massive bird. “No, your people attacked us.”
“We are scavengers, bottom-feeders. By our scraps, this forest breathes.” Blood poured down the priest’s feathered legs and pooled around his feet. “God gives us the living, and we feed the living the dead. That’s how it has always been. We do not waste God’s gifts. Why do you test me? Have you not come to replace me? Will it be Mother Michelle, instead? I’ve led Anathema since it was Benediction. I have done my part.” He fingered the sword wound. “Do yours!”
Biding his time because he didn’t know what the hell was going on, Edgar said, “Would you do anything for your god Crestfallen?”
Father Silas spat. “The Woman in White is not our god. She is nothing more than a vindictive landlord. I have… I have made a mistake.” His words started to slur. “I have been too… hasty.”
I don’t know what to do. I can’t do what I’m supposed to do. The Nameless Forest swayed around them, the canopy catching fire in places.
But he hasn’t attacked me, yet. Something holds him back.
On the opposite side of the church, great spores were coughed into the air from massive grubs that weighed down the trees.
He would do anything for her. To get away from her. Did she warn him? A raven fell from the sky and exploded when it hit the ground. From its feathery ruin, a person was born.
He brought me up here alone. He wants to die. He stabbed himself. Just do it. Put him out of his misery. You have to, anyways. Shit. Shit!
“Finish it,” Edgar said. He threw the
sword at the bird-priest, and Silas caught it. “She wants you to kill yourself. You already know that.” Edgar tried to stop his voice from shaking, but he couldn’t help it. “Who told you?”
Father Silas reared up, the sword pointing at his neck. “She promised. I always knew.” His avian eyes were wet and wide. “I’ve sinned enough?”
“You have.”
“I’ve converted enough?”
“More than enough.” Edgar told himself not to look away.
“Kill myself?”
“As quickly as you… as quickly as…” He nodded. “Yes.”
Father Silas nodded and said, “Through hell we find heaven.” The intestine-like mouth shot out of his torso. “By our evils we are made good.” It snaked around his body and then burrowed into the wound in his chest. At that moment, he pulled the sword back, said to Edgar, “You should run now, Blood of the Cloth,” and drove its blade through his neck.
He wandered around for a moment, geysers of blood spewing from his throat. Then, when the torso mouth had grown fat on his innards, he died.
CHAPTER X
Thirty-Four Days Ago
Horace showed no mercy, and Edgar wouldn’t have it any other way. Clouds of dirt swirled around them as they blocked, parried, and riposted one another throughout the courtyard.
Edgar’s arm ached, threatening to revolt every time his brother’s sword crashed against his shield. His legs wobbled as he sidestepped and ducked stabs and swings. He breathed like a dying dog in a deadening heat, three paces from death’s door. He was embarrassing himself and losing badly; and Edgar wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Tired?” Horace asked.
Edgar nodded. He shook the sweat out of his helmet. “Exhausted.”
“You’re better than you think.” Horace took his brother’s sword and shield to put away. “Too cautious, and yet, too imprecise.” He stowed both their armaments in the rack at the courtyard’s edge.
Edgar doubled over and caught his breath. “I don’t want to hurt you.” If he didn’t get out of the sun soon, there wouldn’t be anything left of him but a puddle of sweat and dented armor.
