The Doom of Fallowhearth

by Robbie MacNiven

  “I will have to corroborate that with both Abelard and Kloin once they return,” Damhán said. “In the meantime, I will have this girl conducted to the dungeon.” Both Logan and Ulma began to protest, and Durik’s voice rose above them.

  “She is not a prisoner,” Durik said as Carys began to cry again. He was angry, and he was no longer doing much to hide it. “She is a subject of Terrinoth, and she has done nothing wrong!”

  Damhán looked at the orc, her expression as cold as the peaks of the Dunwarrs.

  “As Captain Kloin has likely already told you, the garrison house is full, and your rooms are taken. There is nowhere else for her to stay besides the dungeon and, prisoner or not, I will not permit her to spend the night beyond the castle walls, not until I have questioned her further.”

  “There is a spare room,” Ulma said abruptly. All eyes turned to the dwarf.

  “Lady Kathryn’s,” she said, her thumbs stuck casually in the pockets of her leather apron. “Why can’t she spend the night there?”

  Logan expected Damhán to deny the suggestion immediately, but instead she looked at Durik.

  “You are certain there is no more you can glean from searching Lady Kathryn’s room? No traces of her that you might have missed?”

  “I am sure,” Durik said. “That chamber has nothing more to offer us.”

  “Then I will have the servants prepare it for our guest,” Damhán said. “And since you seem so concerned with her safety, pathfinder, you can stand watch outside her door. If I awake tomorrow and find that she is gone, you can consider your contracts terminated and your status reduced to outlaws of the barony of Forthyn. Am I clear?”

  Logan nodded, followed by Ulma. Durik didn’t move, except to take his hand off the hilt of his knife.

  Chapter Nine

  Kloin returned not long after. At some point Abelard had caught up with him. Logan had just finished pilfering food from the castle scullery when he heard raised voices coming from the hall. He considered taking the other way out through the kitchens, but heard the bass tones of Mildred scolding someone just beyond the door. Given Tobin’s stories about the matron he decided he’d rather risk the wrath of a force of recently bereaved men-at-arms over being caught in her domain. He climbed the stairs into the hall.

  Kloin and Abelard were standing at the far end of the table, flanked by several of their men. They were clearly fresh from the road, cloaks still hanging off their shoulders and their boots and breeches spattered with mud. Damhán was in Abelard’s high chair at the far end of the table before the hearth, the tome still opened before her. She looked less than captivated by whatever Kloin or Abelard was saying.

  Ulma and Durik had left the castle minutes earlier for the tavern, and Logan abruptly regretted lingering behind to fill his belly. He made an effort to keep to the edge of the hall and work his way around the angry gathering, towards the main door. He got all of three yards before everyone saw him. Kloin transfixed him with an accusatory finger.

  “There he is! Murderer!”

  “Actually, Durik is the murderer,” Logan said, immediately beginning to backpedal towards the scullery stairs. “I, in fact, prevented a double murder being committed when I stopped you from cutting his head off.”

  “You’ll hang,” Kloin raged, beginning to move around the table towards Logan. “All three of you!” Logan changed course, keeping the table between him and the advancing men-at-arms. Damhán remained seated, looking decided unimpressed with all around her.

  “Seneschal, you won’t allow violence in the walls of your own keep, will you?” Logan pleaded with Abelard. The warden looked torn. Clearly he had no desire to get caught up in rivalries imported from Highmont – Logan didn’t doubt his first and only priority was to impress Lady Damhán. The seneschal kept his mouth shut.

  “My lady,” Kloin practically shouted at Damhán. “I don’t know what they’ve told you, but this is the truth. The orc murdered one of my men. He ran him through like a beast at the hunt, like a brute boar!”

  “I’m amused that you would say that,” Damhán said, her words stilling Kloin’s fury. “Very ‘boring’ indeed. I fear you must learn not to raise your voice in my presence, captain.”

  Kloin opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. A look of surprise replaced the raw anger coloring his face.

  “I’ve never really paid much attention to you, Kloin,” Lady Damhán said, still not moving from her seat, like a predator using its stillness to attract prey. “For quite obvious reasons. You are of no importance to me whatsoever. In all honesty, I didn’t know who you were until we departed Highmont. You happened to have finished your watch duties when Baroness Adelynn insisted I take protection. That is the extent of how highly you were recommended for this undertaking.”

  The captain’s features had gone white with fear. He tried once more to speak, but the only sound that passed his lips was a low, ugly croak. The hairs on the nape of Logan’s neck prickled, and he found himself now edging the opposite way around the table, away from Damhán and closer to the men-at-arms.

  “But despite the baroness’s directives, I do not need your protection, Captain Kloin,” Damhán went on, her voice finding the precise tone of a tutor berating an unruly child. “You are here to give Baroness Adelynn peace of mind. Nothing more. You are certainly not here to raise your voice in my presence. Do that again, and I might not give it back.”

  Damhán tapped a single digit on the open page before her, the smallest of motions. Kloin let out an audible cry, the abrupt sound seeming to surprise even him. He stumbled back, a hand going up to his throat, staring at Damhán. Then, without a word, he turned and fled from the hall. An ugly silence settled in his wake. Logan kept very still.

  “My apologies if we have disturbed you, my lady,” Abelard said carefully. “Is there anything you require of me?”

  “No,” Damhán said idly, turning her attention back to the book and slowly turning a page. “I will see you at supper tonight, seneschal.”

  Abelard bowed and made his own hasty exit, waving the men-at-arms out with him. Logan began to tiptoe after them.

  “Master Lashley.”

  Logan froze and half turned, trying to conjure up a smile.

  “My lady?”

  “I visited the butcher today. The one your dwarf companion mentioned in your report. Unsurprisingly, it seems at least some of the rumors relating to these disappearances were false. His child was healthy and well, and he told me she hasn’t been missing for a moment.”

  “Well, praise Kellos,” Logan said, daring to take another step towards the door. “I’ll be sure to tell the others!”

  Damhán said nothing, turning another page. Holding his breath, Logan edged out of the hall.

  • • •

  “Did you know Lady Damhán is a sorceress?”

  “Yes,” Ulma said. Logan flailed his arms in exasperation. They were upstairs in their rented room at the Black Crow. Logan had thought it wise to return there immediately, and had spent much of the rest of the day feasting on the food he had liberated from the castle. Now he was pacing while Ulma crushed several ingot fragments into her small pestle. Durik had remained at the citadel, guarding Carys.

  “She’s a powerful one,” Logan went on. “Not just some hedge wizard with a high office!”

  “The baroness said she had particular abilities that could help our search,” Ulma said, not taking her eyes off her work.

  “Since when did that automatically mean skilled sorceress? I haven’t seen something like that since…”

  He trailed off.

  “Since Dezra?” Ulma finished, looking up at him.

  “Yes,” Logan agreed unhappily, trying to banish the memory of their fourth companion. He had endured enough lost sleep and misery down the years without resurrecting her to haunt him.

  “What did
Damhán do?”

  “She stole Kloin’s voice.”

  Ulma scoffed, placing a sliver of metal in the pestle. “Is that it? Bet you loved that.”

  “I would if she hadn’t given it back. Or if I didn’t think she was about to do the same to me.”

  “Durik said you started off badly with her,” Ulma shrugged. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her. You’re just the sort of man who doesn’t like being told what to do by the opposite sex.”

  “Durik said I started off badly with her?” Logan asked, sounding betrayed. Ulma sighed.

  “I rest my case.” The dwarf uncorked a vial of dark liquid and poured it delicately into the pestle. The metal hissed and fizzed as it dissolved. Logan withdrew rapidly.

  “That’s not going to explode, is it?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Thank the gods,” Logan said relaxing fractionally.

  “It’s more likely to poison the air as we sleep. But it should be fine.”

  “Maybe I’ll go and spend the night on watch with Durik…”

  “Be my guest,” Ulma said, smiling brightly.

  “You just want to get rid of me, don’t you?” The rogue scowled. Ulma sighed and set her mortar down.

  “I’m sorry, Logan,” she said.

  “What for?” he asked suspiciously.

  “For the way I speak to you.”

  “Isn’t… that how you’ve always spoken to me?”

  “Alright, I’m sorry for the way I’ve spoken to you since we met again.”

  “I mean, apology accepted, I suppose,” Logan said, offering a slight shrug. “But why now?”

  “Because I have a bad feeling about this – all of it – and I don’t want you to die thinking I hate you. I just have occasional bouts of strong dislike.”

  “Who said anything about dying?” Logan asked, alarmed. This was just about the last sort of conversation he had expected to be having with Ulma tonight. What had gotten into her?

  “No one, I’m being dramatic.”

  “How un-Ulma like.”

  “Logan, why are you here?” Ulma pressed, her expression serious. “I mean, why did you take this job? Do you have debts? Gambling, or worse?”

  “What an outrageous thing to ask a gentleman!” Logan huffed, crossing his arms defensively.

  “Gambling it is, then.”

  “I pay a scribe at Greyhaven University a good deal of money to reassure me that my debts are manageable,” Logan said. “Especially if I just never go back to Summersong. Besides, I told Baroness Adelynn that I wasn’t doing this for a reward, financial or otherwise.”

  “How very noble of you. But that doesn’t answer my first question. Why are you here? Why did you leave that home you go on about and travel halfway across the Land of Steel when you must have expected you’d end up in a place like this?” She nodded at their shabby surrounds. Logan sighed and sat down in the set opposite her.

  “You know I worked solo for a while after the group split up,” he said, his thoughts wandering as the memories came back. “Tried to make it on my own. Succeeded too, damn it. But it was never quite the same. Not after…” He trailed off. Sudanya loomed large in all their lives. He didn’t need to tell Ulma he’d missed the bonds they’d forged in that bleak, desolate place.

  “Dezra?” Ulma asked quietly.

  “No, not just Dezra. I missed all of you. Yes, even you, dear dwarf.”

  Ulma smiled and Logan stood up once more, clearing his throat, as though to mask what he’d just said. He paced back over to his bed and grimaced, looking up at the timber rafters above it.

  “There’s a spider up there,” he noted, glaring at the little arachnid in its web.

  “Still afraid of them?” Ulma asked, sounding amused.

  “After what we went through I don’t know how you’re not.”

  “I thought you said you missed the old days. Sudanya. That labyrinth of ruin.” Logan shivered slightly, feeling his skin crawl. Too many memories there, of creeping, crawling death.

  “I missed some parts of it. The arachyura and their queen aren’t included in that.”

  “Ariad, I’d almost forgotten about her. That spider bitch and her tricks. She nearly lured us all to our doom.”

  “Durik stuck her,” Logan said. “And then the overlord. What a bastard he was. Withered old beast.”

  “See, happy memories,” Ulma said, getting up from the table and joining Logan beside his bed. She clambered up onto it, ignoring his complaints as her boots sank into the straw mattress, and snatched at the web above it. The spider fled, scuttling up onto the rafter and away into the dark.

  “There,” she said, jumping back down to the floor. “Like you said. Just like old times.”

  • • •

  Durik had placed the platter on the table beside the mirror over an hour earlier. It was still full, the bread and chicken untouched.

  “You should eat,” he said in Goltacht.

  Carys didn’t reply. She was sitting with her legs crossed in the middle of Kathryn’s bed, still wearing her woolen tunic and plaid, the torc around her neck bright in the torchlight. She looked at Durik warily from beneath her unkempt, dark hair. He had seen that look many times before – it was the expression of an animal trying to gauge whether he meant to do it harm or not.

  “If you need me, I will be outside,” he said, turning towards the door. He had been sitting on the steps by the narrow landing outside since Carys had been taken to it, cleaning the dry blood off his spear’s tip and working it out of the haft. He expected it to be a long, slow night.

  “Who used to sleep here?” Carys asked abruptly, making Durik pause. “Whose room is this?”

  “How do you know it isn’t just a spare bedchamber?” he asked, turning back.

  “I can still smell her,” Carys said. “On the pillows. Who was she?”

  “Some were hoping you would already know about that,” Durik said. “Her name was Kathryn.”

  “Where is she now?”

  “We don’t know. That is why we are here, my friends and I. We were asked to look for her.”

  “She is someone great? A chieftain?”

  “A chieftain’s daughter,” Durik said. “She was to rule these lands when her mother passed on. But now she has vanished.”

  “If you are looking for her then why have you taken me?” Carys asked. The tone wasn’t accusatory, but it still stung Durik.

  “The master of this town blames your people for his troubles. He claims you took Kathryn.”

  Carys seemed to consider the statement very seriously for a moment before speaking.

  “Why? What reason would the Redfern have to take her?”

  “I do not know,” Durik admitted. He was angry that he couldn’t offer the girl greater reassurance, that there wasn’t a good reason why she’d been kidnapped and her companions slain. Telling her that he thought it was all folly and madness wouldn’t help. “Do you think any of the other clans would?”

  “No,” Carys said, as though it was a stupid question. “The winter has come early in the north. We only want to make it to Frostgate before the snows do. We have already suffered from the revenants. A war with the southerners would end my people.”

  “The revenants?” Durik asked.

  “Beò marbh,” Carys said. Durik shook his head.

  “Beò marbh? I’m sorry, I do not know this phrase.”

  “It is like… death,” Carys said slowly, pronouncing the words carefully. “Like… Waiqar.”

  Durik felt a chill at the mention of the great necromancer. Many centuries before Waiqar had betrayed his allies in the war against Llovar’s demons and turned to unspeakable magics. His legions of the living dead had terrorized the length and breadth of Terrinoth during the Second Darkness, before he had
finally been defeated.

  “Waiqar has been dead for centuries,” he said. Carys shrugged.

  “His children remain. I have seen one myself. It killed my uncle, then made him walk, like a puppet. We had to kill him again, with fire.”

  Durik was silent for a moment, trying to rationalize what she was describing. A rogue necromancer on the loose in the north? Surely it couldn’t be the work of Waiqar. He’d been consigned to myth and legend long ago.

  “That’s why so many of the clans are coming south so early in the season?” he said slowly. “You are being threatened by dark magics?”

  Carys nodded. “I am sorry that your chieftain’s daughter is dead,” she said. “But we cannot help you find her.”

  “Why do you think she is dead?” Durik asked, surprised. Carys frowned.

  “You said her name was Kathryn. Not her name is Kathryn.”

  “My Goltacht needs practice,” Durik lied.

  “You speak it well,” Carys said. “When they come I will try and to stop them from killing you.”

  “Who? Who is coming?”

  “I’m the daughter of Maelec Morr,” she said. “Carys Morr, youngest child of the chieftain of the Redferns. I told your mistress my name was Mogg because I fear what she may do if she discovers she has a chieftain’s daughter in her power. But I fear what my father may do even more. When he realizes I am missing, he will send the Son of the Wild to bring me home. I hope you are not the one guarding me when he arrives.”

  Durik considered her words, his expression unreadable even as his mind raced. This was no mere clan girl lost in the woods. She was of royal blood. Another mistake made by Damhán and that idiot Abelard. He suppressed the news for the moment, pointing at the platter. He needed time to think.

  “Eat,” he said, and turned to leave.

  As he opened the door, Carys called out after him. “I promise, orc. They will come for me.”

  • • •

  The voice woke Durik, crashing by like thunder. It boomed through the citadel, accompanied by a flash of white lightning that seared in past the arrow slit in the turret’s stairwell.