The Doom of Fallowhearth

by Robbie MacNiven

  “You wouldn’t have anyway,” Dezra said. “I have been in Upper Forthyn for nearly five years.”

  “In this miserable place?” Logan interjected, gesturing at the night-shrouded forest surrounding them. The trees were as dense and as dark as ever, a seemingly impenetrable maze that Dezra walked with confidence.

  “Partly,” she said. “Upper Forthyn suits my temperament.”

  “And you haven’t seen Lady Kathryn at all in the past month?” Logan asked. “Haven’t heard anything through… arcane means?”

  Dezra laughed again, the sound at odds with the morbid sight of the stumbling corpses surrounding them.

  “I’ve seen nothing, and been told nothing, but nor have I been looking,” she said. “Purging the arachyura has occupied my attention for months now.”

  “Why are they here?” Logan wondered aloud, his voice bitter as he considered the presence of the huge spiders. “You said yourself, these creatures don’t come from Blind Muir.”

  “Why do creatures of darkness settle in the dark places of the world?” Dezra asked. “You know the answer well enough, Logan. We’ve been in enough of those dark places together.”

  Logan had to concede that. For a moment, he almost smiled. This was the Dezra he knew: self-assured, sharp. For all her defiant tone, it was part of her character that he liked the most.

  “We have to find the baroness’s daughter,” Ulma said, refocusing the conversation. “If we don’t, we risk a war between the baronies and the northern clans. They make an easy scapegoat.”

  “Do you have any evidence they didn’t take her?” Dezra asked.

  “Not directly, no, but it makes no sense,” Ulma said. “It would gain them no political leverage, and if it was just a ransom they wanted then they’d have sent terms to Highmont weeks ago. Sorcery could explain how Kathryn disappeared from her chambers on the night that she did. That, or she departed of her own free will, though we have no clue as to why she’d do something like that. Disappear without a trace.”

  “Perhaps you could help us solve some of those riddles,” Durik said. He’d been walking behind the other three, deep in thought. “Come with us back to Fallowhearth. Use your abilities to help us track down Lady Kathryn. It could avert a war.”

  “You think I am able to simply walk into Fallowhearth at will?” Dezra asked. “Into the town’s keep as well? Logan wasn’t lying when he said that necromancy is outlawed in Forthyn, on pain of a lasting death via decapitation and immolation. I have no wish to suffer that fate.”

  “But you’ve been to Fallowhearth before,” Logan pointed out. “You emptied the graves around the Shrine of Nordros just last night. I saw the bodies being summoned from the town. Fortuna’s gold, I saw you. I thought it was all a nightmare.”

  “Illusions and dreams are an unavoidable byproduct of the magnitude of the incantation I used last night,” Dezra said. “I did not send shades to torment you specifically, Logan, if that’s what you’re accusing me of.”

  “But why did you steal the town’s dead at all?”

  “Why do you think?” Dezra demanded. “To help rid this place of the death-damned arachyura. My powers are not sufficient on their own. These things have been festering in here for years, breeding and multiplying. It’s a wonder they haven’t taken over the entire forest. They could easily begin infesting other parts of Forthyn, even eastern Terrinoth, if that happens.”

  “We all felt your power that night,” Durik said. “It’s part of the reason we came here. We were sure that whoever dragged two hundred bodies from Fallowhearth to Blind Muir had to know something about what happened to Lady Kathryn.”

  “I told you, I don’t,” Dezra said sharply. Logan knew better than to push the matter, not while they were still lost in the woodland with only Dezra for a guide. They walked on in silence for a while, picking their way between the trees, the shuffling cohort of undead still surrounding them. Logan was at least thankful that their presence was keeping his mind off his own exhaustion – he suspected that if he stopped now and sat down, he wouldn’t be able to get back up again.

  “You spoke of illusions,” Durik said to Dezra. “I met with the tomb-keeper of the Shrine of Nordros, in Fallowhearth. He thought he had seen Lady Kathryn on the night of her disappearance, in among the gravestones. Could that have been another illusion?”

  “Possibly,” Dezra answered. “If someone was casting an incantation of particular power in the town, it may have created echoes.”

  “Echoes are different from illusions,” Ulma pointed out.

  “You are trying to ascribe hard rules to arcane practices,” Dezra said. “You should all know by now that all such efforts end in madness. Even I cannot account for the byproducts of my work, let alone what might happen when another practitioner attempts a spell of great magnitude.”

  “And you haven’t come across any other powerful arcanists in Forthyn?” Logan asked. “Someone capable of, say, conjuring Kathryn straight from her chambers?”

  “If you hadn’t already noticed, I have hardly been mingling with the barony’s populace,” Dezra said. “Nor do my abilities allow me to scry every magic user in Forthyn, much less those who don’t wish to be found.”

  Logan realized that the way ahead was no longer lit by Dezra’s grim balefire. For a moment he began to panic, before noticing that there were no more nests and no more canopy to ignite. They’d reached the edge of Blind Muir. Ahead, the darkness that had once shrouded the dead ground and the fallow fields leading to Fallowhearth was giving way to the first hint of daylight, a slender, golden line that picked out the caps of the Dunwarrs. Logan had seen sunsets from Lorimar to Ru, but right now this was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

  “Thank you, great Fortuna,” he said, stumbling out beyond the tree line.

  “You’re welcome,” Dezra said. Her corpse puppets had halted at the edge of the forest. Logan turned back to her.

  “You’re sure you won’t come with us, then?” Durik asked.

  “No,” Dezra replied. “I don’t belong among the company you keep any more. I have started a task here in this forest, and I will not leave it until it has been completed.”

  “You won’t even come for old times’ sake?” Logan said. Dezra let out her dark little chuckle.

  “You haven’t been acting as though you want my company, Logan Lashley.”

  Logan scowled to hide his embarrassment in the growing light. Just then he didn’t know what he wanted, and that, in his long experience, was always a bad thing.

  “You caught me at a bad time,” he said.

  “That almost sounds like an apology.”

  “You don’t think about the good times at all?” Logan asked. “The places we all saw together? The adventures we had?”

  “Occasionally,” Dezra said, her tone guarded. “But I was younger then. We all were.”

  “You don’t look any different,” Logan said. It was true. Durik and Ulma might have aged slower than him, but the signs were there once the rogue had looked hard enough. Dezra, though, appeared the same age she had in Sudanya, just shy of thirty summers. She smiled, and Logan felt twenty years younger again. Until she spoke.

  “I wish I could say the same, Logan. Be thankful. This long youth hasn’t come cheaply.”

  “At least you’re not worried about your teeth falling out and your hair turning gray. Not that that’s a bad look for a necromancer.”

  Dezra smiled, but there was a hard gleam in her eyes, and the expression faded.

  “I’ve nothing more to offer any of you. I’ve told you all I know. My advice would be to leave Upper Forthyn. Go home, wherever that may be.”

  “Why?” Logan asked. It was one thing to refuse to help their search, but to ward them off entirely? “What aren’t you telling us, Dezra?”

  “I want what’s best for all of you,” she
replied. “No good can come of lingering in a place like this.”

  Another deflection, but Logan could tell he wasn’t going to get any more out of her. He buried a sigh and conjured a half smile.

  “Home is overrated,” he said. “Besides, I’m sworn to Baroness Adelynn’s service until this task is completed. Wouldn’t want to become an oath-breaker.”

  “And change the habit of a lifetime?” Dezra asked. “Go with every ounce of Fortuna’s luck, my friends.” Logan bowed his head, and Ulma placed a hand on his shoulder, nodding.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever called on old Nordros before,” the rogue said. “But may that cold bastard not see you in person anytime soon.”

  Dezra nodded at the off-color blessing. Then Logan turned, and, following Durik and Ulma, began to limp towards the dawn.

  • • •

  The camp they had abandoned the previous night still stood, the lean-tos and their packs undisturbed. Ulma began collecting them, grumbling under her breath. Durik moved further up the track, crouched in the morning half-light.

  “What’s he doing?” Logan asked as he joined Ulma, taking his pack off her.

  “Tracking,” Ulma said unhelpfully.

  “He’s found something?”

  “Why don’t we ask him?” Ulma said, shucking her own pack onto her back. Logan followed her towards the track, glancing back one more time at Blind Muir. The dead were still there, a shadowy rank on the edge of the forest, shrouded by twisted boughs, but Dezra had gone.

  “There are hoofprints in the dirt,” Durik said. He was crouched in the mud of the trackway, his keen eyes apparently unperturbed by the weak dawn light. “A horse rode this way and back, sometime yesterday.”

  “Back to Fallowhearth?” Logan asked. Durik nodded.

  “I thought I heard a horse last night,” Logan said, a fragment of a memory stirring within him. “It felt like another of those damned dreams. I don’t remember much before Ulma woke me up.”

  “How can we hope to find Lady Kathryn when every lead turns out to be either false or a trap?” Ulma asked unhappily.

  “The air was heavy with illusion that night,” Durik said, standing. “Now is no time for despair, my friends. We can only keep going. At the very least, I’m going to find whoever is responsible for this trickery. I am tired of finding more questions every time I look for answers.”

  “That’s you told,” Logan said to Ulma. Neither she nor Durik responded.

  “Do you hear that?” Durik said, cocking his head to one side like some sort of avian. Logan listened, and eventually managed to detect a faint, distant ringing.

  “Bells?” he asked uncertainly. Durik was looking north-east towards Fallowhearth, where the castle turrets and the two shrine spires were just visible on the lightening horizon.

  “There are two bells tolling,” Durik said slowly. “It has to be the shrines of Kellos and Nordros, ringing together.”

  “Not like them to be in accord over something,” Logan said, smirking at his own observation.

  “That’s because they’re sounding the alarm,” Durik responded. “Fallowhearth is under attack.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  By the time they reached Fallowhearth, both the Shrine of Nordros and the Chapel of the Flame of Kellos Eternal had ceased ringing their bells. Logan wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

  There was no immediate sign of an attack being conducted on the town. The streets were empty, with neither refugees nor assailants in sight. The trio strode along the main street towards the keep, wariness battling with exhaustion. Logan felt as though he hadn’t slept in days, and his whole body was stiff and aching.

  They found the keep’s gates barred, and there seemed to be an unusual amount of activity on its battlements.

  “What is happening?” Logan called up from the road. He got no response.

  “We’ve returned from Blind Muir, but the seneschal and his men are still in the forest,” Durik said, trying a different tack. “Lady Damhán must hear our report. Open the gates immediately.”

  A coif-clad head appeared above them, the look of uncertainty evident even from beneath the gatehouse.

  “Captain Kloin has ordered us to admit no one,” he began to say.

  “Not this again,” Ulma snarled, pushing her way past Logan and Durik. “Listen to me, manling!” She pointed up at the unfortunate sentinel, then planted both hands on her hips, her expression furious.

  “I’ve just fought my way through a forest full of giant damned spiders looking for, among other things, your idiot seneschal. I’ve been rescued by a legion of undead corpses, and walked all the way back here from Blind Muir only to find no sign of any threat to this miserable, dung-heap town whatsoever. I’m also all out of brandy, so either you open this sorry, ancestor-damned excuse for a gate right now, or I blow it open. And don’t think I can’t!”

  The sentry had fled out of sight long before Ulma had finished. Logan held his breath, then grinned and patted her on the shoulder when the portcullis began to rise ponderously. Wordlessly she turned her glare on him, and he quickly withdrew his hand.

  “Well done,” Durik said as the gate swung open behind the rising iron bars. A stonyfaced man-at-arms in a tabard bearing Abelard’s half-roc was waiting for them within the entrance hall.

  “Is the town under attack or not?” Logan demanded, striding in through the gate as though he owned the citadel.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, then hesitated. “Partly, sir.”

  “Come on man, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Someone broke into the keep last night, sir. They’re still here.”

  “In here?” Logan reiterated, looking past the guard at the stair shaft leading up into the keep’s chambers. He suddenly regretted being the first one inside.

  “They’ve been confined to one of the upper bedrooms, sir,” the guard said.

  “Captured, you mean?”

  “Not yet sir. Just contained.”

  “Just so I understand this correctly,” Logan said slowly. “One person broke into the keep last night, was discovered, but they’re still here and still successfully resisting capture? Dare I ask what sort of creature our intruder is?”

  “A clansman, sir,” the man-at-arms said.

  “He’s in Carys’s chamber,” Durik added, his voice certain.

  “How do you know that?” Logan demanded.

  “She said someone would come for her. Someone she called the Son of the Wild.”

  “And you neglected to tell anyone?” Logan snapped, clearly frustrated. “In what way didn’t this seem important?”

  “What could one man do?”

  “Apparently take on an entire castle’s garrison for a whole night,” Logan said. “You’re far too fond of that girl, Durik!”

  “This is madness,” Ulma said, her anger clearly still simmering. “Take us to the chamber where he’s been cornered.”

  The guard offered a short bow and led them up through the keep’s narrow stairways and passages. Along the way Logan could hear shouts and the clattering of armored bodies from elsewhere within the stone structure. He noted that all the doorways they passed were secured shut. He couldn’t help but wonder at the supreme confidence, or supreme stupidity, of the man who decided to infiltrate such a place alone. What sort of mad, brute savage was going to be waiting for them in that bedchamber?

  The stairway winding up to Kathryn’s tower was choked with the castle’s garrison. Their guide shouted at them to make way, and Logan, Durik and Ulma worked their way up to the landing outside Kathryn’s old room. As Logan had feared, both Kloin and Lady Damhán were already there.

  “Hurry up, man,” Kloin was snapping at a sweat-streaked servant who was attempting to waft black smoke from a fitfully smoldering cluster of sticks in under the bedchamber’s h
eavy timber door. The captain turned as the trio arrived, and Logan relished the brief flash of surprise that crossed the man’s flushed visage.

  “Didn’t expect to see us back, Kloin?” he asked. Now it was his turn to wear that infuriating grin. Kloin just scowled.

  “Not so soon, anyway,” Lady Damhán replied for him. She was standing a few steps up from the landing, on the edge of the stairway’s spiral curve, overseeing the attempted smoke-raising like the tall, gaunt idol of some savage religion, clad in her pale robes.

  “I take it you found no trace of Lady Kathryn in the Blind Muir?” she asked.

  “Nothing relating to the baroness’s daughter,” Logan said archly. “Blind Muir’s a lovely place, by the way. I highly recommend you both visit sometime soon. Preferably at night.”

  “They’ve hardly been gone a day,” Kloin growled to Damhán. “How thorough could their search have been? You should send them back.”

  “Where is Seneschal Abelard?” Damhán asked, ignoring the captain.

  “He’s still looking for Lady Kathryn,” Logan said. “In fact I think he’ll be looking in there permanently.”

  “We were attacked,” Ulma said, pushing Logan to one side. “There are arachyura infesting the forest. There was no sign of Kathryn. If she fled there, or something took her there, I fear no one will ever find her again.”

  “There is something else,” Durik added. “On our way back here, I noticed hoof prints in the track leading to the town from the south-west. They were fresh, but none of us took any mounts.”

  Logan expected Kloin to snap something about farmers and plough horses, but instead he cast a glance at Damhán that looked almost apprehensive.

  “My horse was stolen last night,” Damhán said. “We assumed it was related to this incursion.”

  “Why would someone break into the castle stables to steal your horse?” Logan asked.

  “But one question of many,” Damhán said. “And, unfortunately, not the most pressing at the moment.”

  “How long has he been in there?” Ulma asked, nodding towards the door. The servant was still trying to generate a decent amount of smoke, to little effect. It was making the back of Logan’s throat itch.