The Path of Sorrow

by David Pilling

  None of them would get anything from him. His ancestors were waiting, and he could sense the shades of his mother and father beckoning him to join them in the shadow-world of the afterlife.

  * * * *

  “The moment of truth is upon us, Eggs.” Nurse Lofty fastened his chin-strap, which held in place a heavy reinforced steel helmet. It was smooth and dome-shaped with an eyeless face-plate that, when swung shut, would leave the wearer blind, completely concealing his face. Eggs wore an identical headpiece. They had forged their own armour for the particular task at hand, as they had been sworn to secrecy on pain of a very slow, agonising death.

  “Indeed, Nurse Lofty, indeed.” Eggs' stubby fingers worked at the leather straps of the cumbersome plate armour on his bulky shoulder. “I can’t help but feel a touch nostalgic though, at the risk of sounding clichéd—”

  “Perish the thought!” Nurse Lofty reassured his colleague.

  Eggs smiled benignly and continued. “—but it strikes me that this is the end of an era.”

  “Quite, quite.” Nurse Lofty patted Eggs' hands away and fastened his straps for him. “It is only natural to feel a touch of emotion when a big change is afoot. There, would you mind?”

  Nurse Lofty held up his arm and allowed Eggs to get at the awkward buckles of his own armour.

  “But what’s more important,” Nurse Lofty continued, “sentimentality or your own development? After all, Eggs, this is your career we’re talking about.”

  “And yours.” Both men nodded to one another, relieved to have discussed their feelings. “We can’t allow ourselves to be held back, Nurse Lofty, that wouldn’t do at all.”

  “Onwards and upwards, Eggs, our first task for our new employer.” They tested each other’s armour with a few sharp tugs and each gave a satisfied nod.

  “Onwards and upwards.” Eggs smiled.

  A distant bell rang.

  “Shall we?”

  Both men turned towards the door of their quarters, satisfied they were doing the right thing.

  * * * *

  Colken had reached the ledge where Sorrow sat watching the battle rage far below. The high peak was shrouded in mist, but the view was clear enough to make out the struggle between the High Bloods and Hoshea’s army. The High Bloods were gradually giving ground, though they fought savagely. The distant sounds of fighting drifted up around them like wisps of smoke; the thin muffled din of warfare, punctuated by frequent stabs of sound as a blade rang against another at just the right angle, or a scream echoed off the rock face in a way that propelled the sound up the mountain.

  Colken had laboured with all his speed and strength up the sheer cliff face, but he felt no fatigue, such was his desperation to reach the child.

  He had found Sorrow huddled against a rock, hugging his bony knees, his robe whipping about him in the wind. Colken paused, surprised at how small Sorrow was in the flesh. Blue left his side and padded towards the diminutive figure. A tiny thin hand reached out and patted the dog’s neck.

  As Colken approached, Blue looked up at him and whined agitatedly. Sorrow slowly turned his head. The face inside the hood was just an ordinary boy’s, round and pale, but with a serenity that seemed ageless.

  Colken was lost for words. In his mind he had pictured discovering the boy in great peril and fighting off his attackers, laying down his life in the process. But instead he had found an enigmatic child, calm and unthreatened. He stared, wondering what to do next.

  “You are the only one who sought me for honourable reasons.” Sorrow frowned at him, adding, almost as an afterthought, “yet you do not understand why. Thank you for bringing me my dog, I wouldn’t want to leave without him.”

  Blue whined again and rested his huge head in Sorrow’s lap.

  * * * *

  “Come now, Djanki, bring me the child, you are so close.” The Raven Queen’s face pressed against the glass tank as she whispered at Colken’s beating heart. “Spirit him away while those fools are busy slaughtering each other. Bring him to the House of Unkindness. Bring me my prize.”

  There was a knock at the door, followed by a rustling of feathers as the ravens in the roof shifted their gaze from the Queen. She continued to gaze at Colken’s heart.

  “Enter.”

  The double doors swung open and Nurse Lofty strode towards the Raven Queen with a cold determined expression. He gripped her throat tightly with his huge, armoured hands. As he did so, Eggs flipped his face-plate shut for him and circled behind her, pinning both her arms in one of his and closing his own face-plate.

  She opened her mouth to scream, but Nurse Lofty had already closed off her airways, and she could only make quiet rasping sounds as her eyes bulged and her face went red. As she struggled, the glass tank toppled over and smashed, sending the heart rolling across the floor.

  Sensing the Raven Queen’s distress, the flock of ravens flew to rescue their mistress. Their shrieks were only matched by the sound of their wickedly sharp beaks hammering on the helmets and armour worn by Eggs and Nurse Lofty. The ravens tore at their legs and any weak or unprotected spot in their armour, turning their clothes red with blood, but their relentless attack was futile. Knowing her life would expire before long, and when it did, her link with the ravens would be broken and the birds would simply disperse, the two men held firm.

  The Raven Queen struggled but was helpless against their brute strength and determination. Her form morphed again and again, her face turning from the beautiful young woman, to the beaked hag, to the frail old lady, and her hands scratched and flailed at her traitorous killers, but slowly her strength faded. And as it did so, her magic failed and the beating of Colken’s disembodied heart began to slow.

  * * * *

  “It is time for me to go now.” Sorrow stood and walked towards the edge, peering down at the long, steep drop. “This world seeks to use me, and I will not be used.”

  “But I came to save you.” Colken stepped closer, reaching out with his hand. “Come with me; I’ll take you somewhere safe.”

  Sorrow smiled at him. “Go and rescue someone else, barbarian. The world may need heroes, but I don’t.” Colken stepped forward to reach out to the boy but instead halted, clutching his chest. He groaned, gasping for breath, and collapsed to the ground.

  Sorrow frowned down at him, as though solving a riddle in his head.

  “Colken!” Follie appeared, his knuckles bloody from his desperate scramble up the slope. On seeing Colken collapsed on the floor, he dropped to his knees, cradling the Djanki’s head in his lap, and glanced up at Sorrow.

  “What have you done to him?” he demanded.

  Sorrow said nothing.

  * * * *

  The ravens flocked frantically around the two orderlies as the last of The Raven Queen’s unnatural life-force drained from her. She had stopped struggling now, her eyes rolling back into her head, but still the birds pecked and scratched at her murderers. Their helmets and armour were badly dented and covered in blood as the ravens broke their own necks and beaks against them.

  Finally, The Raven Queen went slack in Eggs' arms and he turned, staggering towards the great window looking out onto the sea, his legs and arms torn to shreds and bleeding profusely. Nurse Lofty continued to squeeze his former mistress’s throat, knowing he could not be sure she was dead until the ravens ceased their attack.

  Eggs groped blindly for the great double window and threw it open. The Raven Queen’s last glimmer of power was snuffed out, and the ravens swarmed out and into the open sky in a great black cloud.

  A moment later, Colken’s heart gave its ultimate beat.

  * * * *

  Sorrow still stood, gazing down at Colken’s limp body. The wind began to pick up, tugging more insistently at his loose robes.

  Follie looked up, his tears whipped away by the forceful wind and his hair blowing across his face. He put an arm up to shield himself and squinted at Sorrow. The boy’s eyes had become cloudy and were turning pure white. His
robes were now flapping wildly in the gale and Follie clung to Colken’s body, terrified he would be blown over the edge.

  Sorrow stepped forward and placed his hand on Colken’s lolling head. As he did so, he began to tremble, his brow furrowed. Follie felt a tingling sensation where he held Colken’s body.

  Then Sorrow lifted his head. His eyes began to clear as he took three steps backwards, held his arms out wide, and allowed himself to drop backwards over the edge. As he fell from view, Blue left Colken’s side and leaped over the edge after him.

  Follie gazed open-mouthed, struggling to understand what he had just seen, and remembered his friend lying dead in his arms. To his amazement, he felt a twitch of life. Colken’s chest expanded and contracted, almost imperceptibly; a breath returned to his lungs.

  Slowly, the Djanki's eyes opened a crack, and his vision cleared enough for him to see Follie staring back at him. He frowned. Something was different. He could sense something it took him a moment to recognise, something he had been without for some time. He lifted his hand, pressed it to his chest and felt, for what seemed like the first time in his life, the beating of his heart.

  * * * *

  The Hall of Paladins was the grandest space inside Silverback, a vast chamber carved out of the rock by the same unknown hands that had shaped the interior of the mountain long before the coming of mankind. Originally used by its creators for the Gods only knew what purpose, Templars had filled it with crude symbols of martial glory. Rows of squat pillars decorated with carvings of men fighting and dying, tattered, blood-stained banners hung from the walls to commemorate past campaigns, tapestries embroidered with more scenes of violence, hunting, jousting, and pitched battles.

  The walls were lined with statues and busts forged in iron of the greatest knights of the Temple, remembered as Paladins. Their fierce expressions, ranging from the beefy to the hawkish, glared down at the pitifully small assembly now gathered in the middle of the echoing cavern. Edith had summoned all the remaining senior knights of The Temple to meet here. Their numbers had been decimated in recent times, and now there were just twenty-two of them.

  The sound of their harsh, contending voices echoed and re-echoed in the vastness of the hall. The older knights shared Felipe de Gascur’s views on the Grand Master, and soon fell to exchanging bitter words with their younger comrades, many of whom had grown up alongside Fulk and long since abandoned the old-fashioned hatred for sorcery.

  From the shadows of the vaulted stairway that led down onto the shimmering marble ocean of the floor, Edith watched with amused contempt as the knights argued. Predictably, some of the quicker tempers soon boiled over, swords were drawn, and the hall rang to the scrape and clash of steel.

  Edith began to descend the wide steps, moving with all her sinuous grace of old, a gentle smile playing on her lips. Her hair was once again a shining silver-gold torrent, washed and brushed and floating about her alabaster shoulders, and her recent loss of weight only lent a delicate ethereal grace to her natural beauty. She wore a gown of shimmering white raw silk that clung artfully to her angular body, giving her the appearance of an angel who had chosen to saunter down from the heavens.

  The duelling knights stopped in mid-swing as they saw Edith, swords almost falling from their hands. Silence fell in the hall as they saw what came behind her.

  Fulk the No Man’s Son, Grand Master of the Temple, walked stiffly down the steps, supported by two hefty squires either side of him. He looked much older than his years, his face drawn and set like a man afflicted by some internal agony, his hair turned thin and white. However, against the expectations of most, he was alive.

  Edith stopped at the foot of the steps and folded her hands demurely in front of her. “Put away your swords, sirs,” she said. “There is no reason for you to fight. Your Master is among you once again.”

  Her words echoed and died away without meeting a response. Then, one of the veterans lumbered forward, a bow-legged bear of a man named Sir Brian de Mauley.

  “And where has he been these past months?” he wheezed in an indignant high-pitched voice, his breath whistling through a broken nose and a mouthful of broken teeth. “Where has our leader and master been when we required his leadership, with the realm falling into ruins and the wolf-cult howling outside our walls?”

  “I have slept, Sir Brian,” Fulk replied in a tired voice before Edith could answer for him. “What I did was not easy. I tried to call upon the power of a God and almost died as a result.”

  “No true child of The Temple deals in sorcery!” cried another veteran. “It is blasphemy. The dark arts are forbidden to us. We rely on strength of arm and steel, as our God intended.”

  A few rough voices rose in agreement. Others tried to shout them down. Edith frowned and cried out for silence, but received a tirade of abuse in return, as men cursed her for a whore and a witch and the wanton shit of a she-devil.

  It was all too much for Sir Brian. “Long years have I served The Temple,” he declared, raising his sword. “Spilled my blood and sweat, given the best of myself over and over again, and I have not done so merely to see it given over to some smirking bitch and a crippled pervert.”

  Sir Brian’s angry face turned a ghastly shade of white, and he screamed like a stuck pig. His sword fell from his grasp, clanging on the flagstones, and he collapsed, making pitiful whimpering noises as he desperately tried to wrench off his gauntlet.

  “It burns, does it not?” said Fulk in a cold, matter-of-fact tone. He shrugged off his attendants, for his apparent physical weakness had been a sham, and stood to his full impressive height.

  “There will be no more insults directed at me or Edith,” he said. “No more plotting in dark corners, no more conspiracies or doubts. I am lord here.”

  By now Sir Brian had managed to get his gauntlet off, and the hall echoed to gasps as his hand, which should have been a charred lump of meat judging from his agony, appeared whole and unmarked. But the veteran knight was as brave as the mastiff he somewhat resembled and turned a sneering face to Fulk.

  “This just proves me right,” he spat, holding up his hand. “You are a witch, a student of the unclean arts, of the sort we used to burn in older and better days, and not fit to walk inside The Temple precincts.”

  Fulk folded his arms and turned his empty eyes on Sir Brian and the rest of the veterans, thirteen battered, greying and disgruntled men, clustered behind him. Using his third eye, which not only gave him sight in this world but a glimpse into the minds and intentions of men, he saw they remained stubborn, defiant, unwilling to accept his presence. He would either have to kill them, or live with their threat.

  “Who among you will follow me?” he demanded. “When I raise our banner and lead us out of the mountain?”

  The younger knights uttered a great shout, and Edith looked at him with delight. “You will do as I have advised you?” she asked, her eyes shining.

  “I will,” he answered, “but take no pleasure in it, my dear. Your way is the only course left to me now. I will have to use all the powers at my disposal to unite the land. Every time I make use of the unclean arts, as Sir Brian calls them, I become a little less human and shift a little closer to the demon. That is why I was so reluctant for so long. My humanity is at stake.”

  Fulk could see she did not understand, so he gave up trying to explain. She would see, soon enough, what changes would be wrought in him. He turned his attention back to his knights.

  “You leave me no choice, sirs,” he told the veterans. “It must be exile, death or imprisonment for you. I am not foolish enough to send you away, to conspire and raise armies against me, but nor do I wish to kill you. I have the blood of too many of your comrades on my hands already. So it must be prison.”

  “Clap us in irons, then,” growled Sir Brian. “Chain us up in the dark beneath the mountain if you will. You will hear us in your dreams.”

  “Sir, I have seen and heard far worse than you in my dreams. You can walk
to the dungeons of your own volition, or be carried on a wave of pain. Perhaps one day you shall see the sun again, but only when you have abandoned your hatred of me.”

  The veterans chose to walk and marched away proudly to their imprisonment, heads held high.

  * * * *

  The gates of Silverback stood over thirty feet high and were monstrosities of cross-grained black hardwood, bound in iron and engraved with images of the unsheathed sword that was the symbol of the War God. They had not been opened for months.

  The wolf-cultists had grown bold and ventured ever closer, trying to spy out ways they might enter and slaughter the cowards hiding inside. Men and women draped in wolf skins howled and capered about the sheer walls, dreaming with savage ecstasy of the hot splash and flow of blood that would ensue once they forced entry. They had already razed and destroyed most of the outlying villages and farms, giving the inhabitants the stark choice of joining the cult or being sacrificed to The Great Wolf.

  On a bright and brutal Chill day, when the pale northern sun was at its zenith, long-disused chains rattled in their fixtures, iron wheels ground into life, and the black doors swung open. The waiting horde in stinking wolf-pelts rushed forward and then stumbled to a halt as the thunder of hoofs shook the ground.

  The Grand Master of the Temple led his knights and men-at-arms out of the mountain, six hundred steel angels, faceless and terrible behind their visors. The wolf-cult took one look at the oncoming tide and was overcome by fear. They fled, howling like terrified humans rather than wolves, and were ridden down.

  Inside the privacy of his helmet, bitter tears trickled from Fulk’s empty eye-sockets. He wept for himself and for the future.