Warden's Path

by Heath Pfaff

  Warden’s Path

  Book 2 of The Will and The Way

  Heath Pfaff

  Book 1

  (first novel)

  Prologue 00 - Condemned

  Chapter 01 - To Be Dead

  Chapter 02 - Beyond Rift

  Chapter 03 - The Woods

  Chapter 04 - Blood in the Snow

  Chapter 05 - Ghouls

  Chapter 06 - City of Chaos

  Chapter 07 - Water Test

  Epilogue 7.5 - A Letter Home

  Book 2

  (this book)

  Chapter 08 - Beyond the Wall

  Chapter 09 - The Sleeping Village

  Chapter 10 - A Warden

  Chapter 11 - Journey

  Chapter 12 - Into the Dark

  Chapter 13 - Homecoming

  Chapter 14 - Through the Void

  Chapter 15 - Awakening

  Chapter 16 - The Fall

  Chapter 8

  Beyond the Wall

  8.1

  Korva spoke in a soft and supportive tone, one that a mother might use to comfort a child. “It’s difficult for all of us.” I’d been shown to a room, a large room with a fancy bathroom complete with a shower fed from a heated reservoir above. She was the first person to come and see me. Korva was a Warden, though one I’d never met before. She had hair that looked like it recalled being red at some point in the past, though it was faded and her skin was pale white, her eyes shone a faded gray, hazy like those of the rest of the Wardens.

  I understood that now. They were supposed to die. The water test was supposed to kill you, and if you were strong enough, hardened enough by their terrible training, you dragged yourself back to life. Something had gone wrong with my test. I hadn’t died. I was alive and well. My skin was pale, but not ghastly white, my eyes were just as dark as ever, no haze of death covering their almost black color. I was sitting on the edge of the bed, where I'd been since I’d been shown to this place, dressed in a uniform like the Wardens wore, and there was another set of clothing on the bed for me. It was a standard outfit, and I'd been told that there was a tailor who would make any extra pieces I wanted for free. Wardens wore a uniform, but they were allowed to customize it.

  “Friends, lovers, everything from our old life is stripped away. It has to be for us to become what we are now.” Korva spoke again. “That’s what the training is for. If you wish to be powerful, you must first be stripped down to your base, made raw and angry. You should be proud, though. You are the first of those marked for death ever to become a Warden.” She was trying to be encouraging, but I could find no solace in her words.

  “What do you do with the dead?” I asked, my words sounding as raw and angry as I was probably supposed to feel.

  “They are buried, each in a marked grave. They get that for making it so far.” She answered with deference in her voice.

  “I want to see Zarkov’s grave.” The words fled from me in a rush as I looked up at Korva. All I could think about was how he’d left me. He’d said he would come, but he’d given up. I was fiercely angry with him, almost as angry as I was heartbroken. I was also afraid they’d take his body and turn him into a damned golem. Ghoul had told me that didn’t happen to those who made it as far as the water test, but a part of me was still certain that was what they were doing to him.

  She was shaking her head before I’d even finished talking. “You can’t. It’s inside the city, and you probably won’t go back that way. Most Warden business is beyond the walls.”

  Tension ran up my back and my jaw set firm as I tried not to grind my teeth together in agitation. “So I just take it on your word that my friend is well buried? I just accept that he wasn’t thrown in some mass grave with the others when all you Wardens have done is lie to me since this started?” I held back expressing my larger fear. I wasn’t supposed to know anything about the golems. Somehow I held that secret inside, though it desperately wanted to spill from my lips.

  Korva’s expression was sad. “You don’t have to accept it, but it won’t do you any good to carry around the rage you’re feeling at your fellows. You have to move forward now. Everyone who has died is gone and there is no getting any of them back. Going to his grave won’t make you feel better about it, and there is a great deal for you to learn and experience yet. Your life will be better here. You can make friends again, and those you meet will likely live a long, long time. You can have lovers now that come without the risk of loss, if that’s what you want, and you can pursue your own interests to an extent. You’ve got your life back. I would think that for someone in your position, that would be an incredible thing to have.”

  I wasn’t sure how to convey that Zarkov had been the best part of my life. He’d been the closest thing I’d had to happiness in as long as I could remember, and my dreams of him had helped me carry forward. Without him I felt diminished. I was having trouble remembering my original purpose. “All of this is horrible. What has been done to make us what we are, it’s not right.”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not, but it’s necessary. You’ll learn why soon, but it’s imperative that the Wardens exist.”

  “Everyone keeps talking about answers, and yet I’ve made it this far with none. Do the answers ever really come, or do you just keep bating me forward until I do what you want me to?” I asked, the bitterness evident to my own ears. I was so full of anger I could hardly contain it. I wanted to scream and break things, and demand that the injustices before me be made right, and yet I knew that path was childish and impotent.

  “The answers do come, but they only . . “ She began, but was interrupted by a knock on the door.

  She went and answered it. “Kine.” She said a name and bowed, and then she was slipping out the door, probably happy to escape from the bitter angry girl to just about anything else. Someone new and unfamiliar entered the room.

  He was a tall man with hair of wispy white and brown, and eyes that were dim shade of the same tone. His beard matched his hair, though it was longer by far, long and a bit scraggly. He came in and walked towards me with a confident stride until he stood just before the bed where I was sitting.

  “Lillin, I’m Kine. I’ve been asked to question you about your water test.” He said, voice firm and authoritarian. It immediately put me on edge.

  I glared up at him. “What is there to question? You put me in a water coffin and then tried to kill me.” I answered my own question, sensing this might be a risky situation. Kine felt dangerous. My instincts told me to be cautious, but my emotional distress refused to fall in line. For all that I knew I was being immature, I felt I deserved some small pittance of petulance given the situation.

  “That’s the problem.” Kine spoke calmly as he took a firm stance in front of me. “We tried to kill you, but we didn’t succeed. Shaw says that you’ve awakened anyway, but this hasn’t happened before, not with the way we handle this school. This has been a strange year, and we need to understand what has made it this way. If you answer our questions honestly, this won’t take long.”

  “Alright, ask your questions.” There was no point in telling him to go away. I knew he wouldn’t. I was frustrated that I would be answering questions again when they wouldn’t answer mine.

  “When did you first become aware of your ability to use the Will?” He asked. “Shaw says that you may have used it on one of your trials before the water test. Is this true?”

  He meant the city with the monsters of metal and flesh of course. I had felt it there. I’d reached out in desperation, and something had come to me. “That was the first time I may have used it, but I felt it before that.” I answered honestly. I would tell him what he wanted to know. To a point. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about Ghoul and the things he’d
shown me. I wasn’t sure it was safe to give up those secrets.

  “What were you doing when you first felt the Will inside yourself?” His next question came, and I felt him pushing against me, his Will reaching at me, picking around inside my head. It wasn’t comfortable. It hurt, and it was unnerving.

  “I was fighting with someone. I got into an argument and I was angry at him.” I skirted the truth on this.

  Kine’s brow furrowed. “That’s the truth, but you’re not telling me everything. I want you to describe the situation. I want to know all the details.”

  Answering him now would mean giving up Ghoul. Ghoul hadn’t done anything for me. He’d done terrible things to my friend, and yet I didn’t want to share that information with Kine. It was mine. It was a secret that I kept that no one could get to, one thing that remained mine. “No.” I replied coldly.

  Kine tilted his head to one side. “No? I don’t believe you understand the situation. You will answer the questions. This is what I do. I am an Inquisitor. I gather information, and I can extract it from you whether you like it or not, but if you make me force the information from you, it’s going to hurt you a great deal.”

  “You know what I’ve done to get here, Kine. I’m not afraid of pain. I’m not afraid of anything you can do to me. No Warden should fear threats. You sort skoving well make sure of that.” I cursed at him, liking the feel of the word on my tongue. It was a furious kind of word, and I was a furious kind of person just then. Kine was taller than I was, but standing up made me feel bigger than him somehow.

  “I’m not saying you should be. I’m simply saying you could avoid pain by making this easy, but I see we’re past that point.” I felt his Will reach out for me again. It pushed hard into my mind like fiery needles raking through my brain. Bright lights exploded across my vision, but I clenched my fists and held firm.

  I pushed back. I would not give him what he wanted.

  “Describe the situation in which you first felt your connection to the Will.” He ordered, his words hitting me like hammer falls.

  The blows made my tongue feel numb, and my eyes roll back into my head. I opened my mouth to speak and then snapped it closed and glared at him. I pushed back harder. If this was to be a contest of determination, I would prove that I was made of stone. This wasn’t about protecting Ghoul. This was about protecting some corner of myself. I would have a place that was mine, that I would never give it to the Wardens.

  The hooks in my brain tightened, burrowing deeper into my thoughts and I gasped at the pain of it. It felt like the worms burrowing into me again. My legs went weak for a moment and I wished I hadn’t chosen to stand.

  “Describe the situation in which you first felt your connection to the Will.” He said it again, forceful and commanding. The words tugged at me, making my tongue twitch in my mouth as thought it might form words on its own.

  “No!” I growled.

  Kine took a deep breath and then hit me again. This time my vision went white and I felt myself collapse as pure agony burned through my entire body. I couldn’t hear or see anything. All that existed was the pain. My mind didn’t even feel like my own, and my grip on my Will, at least that was what I thought I’d been using to resist, slipped away.

  “ . . . teotic fisva nu antowen miak.” A guttural dark voice broke through the void of white. “Tiam vit nu covek tranian ruthova skra.” The pain stopped suddenly and I realized that the voice I was hearing was coming from my own mouth. I snapped it closed and tried to get back to my feet, though I was confused and dizzy.

  “That was . . . how did . . . “ Kine didn’t look happy as he spoke. “Where did you learn to speak the First Tongue, Lillin?”

  I staggered back up onto my feet. “I don’t know how to speak any other languages.” I didn’t have to lie about that. My throat was raw as though I’d been screaming for hours.

  Kine’s expression was dark, troubled. “That’s the truth” He said, as though he’d expected me to lie.

  “What did those words mean?” I asked, and this time I fell back down next to the bed. I dragged myself back up onto it though the effort was was monumental. My legs wouldn’t hold me just then.

  “I don’t know. Almost no one knows. When you hear it you know what it is. It . . . it has a sound to it, something invasive and terrible, but the language is dead. No one speaks it, and only a few think they can understand it. I heard once . . . ” His words trailed off. He looked at me and I saw just a small spark of fear, though it fled quickly. “I can’t question you anymore today.”

  “What a loss.” I said a bit darkly. I hadn’t really meant to put so much malice into the words, but I was still hurting. I wouldn’t soon forget this.

  Kine gave a short chuckle and shrugged. “I told you we’d have to do it the hard way if you didn’t cooperate. You can’t keep secrets from the Wardens.”

  “Really?” I asked, eyebrow raised. “I’m pretty sure I just did.”

  The smile left Kine’s face. “You be careful, Lillin, or the world is going to break you like the ocean breaks ships on the rocks. You’re losing your way, and that makes for dangerous waters.”

  “My ship had sailed and was lost before I came here. Bring the rocks.” I told him, and this time he left, clearly as finished with me as he was going to get. Once he was gone I could finally let down the walls I’d put up to lock myself away from the realities of my situation.

  They suspected me of some kind of cheating or trickery, or maybe something even more sinister, and whatever had happened to me, whatever that strange language had been when he’d pushed me further, that hadn’t helped my cause. Yet I was alive and whole with my secrets intact for what that was worth.

  I laid back on my bed, and for the first time since he’d passed, I let myself cry for Zarkov. He’d been a friend, a love, and in the end, all I really had in the world. Now he was gone and it was just me. I needed this time to fall apart.

  Eventually I fell asleep.

  8.2

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but the next day a Warden came to see me, one that I didn’t yet know. He knocked on my door, drawing me from my sleep. I stood up and straightened my clothing, making myself look presentable before I set myself on course for the door. I swung it open to be greeted by a smiling face, the first I’d seen in some time.

  “Hello, Lillin, I’m Arthos.” He said, offering me a small bow. He was of average height with hair that had probably once been bright blond. His eyes were a murky green color. He was dressed in the way of Wardens, though he had a red sash at his waist and a scabbard of red at his back. The scabbard contained a staff weapon that looked much like mine did, carried in two halves.

  In his hands was a basic leather scabbard that held my familiar weapon. It looked like the exact one I’d used through all of my training. I recognized the scratches on the finish, and the dent just above the latch where the two halves of the staff weapon split. I didn’t remember what catastrophe had left the dent, but I knew every mark on the well used tool.

  “Not here to question me again, then?” I asked, taking my weapon from him and strapping it across my back quickly. It felt good to have the weight there. I felt almost complete. I just needed a pack.

  “No, I’m not here for questioning.” He answered, still cheery. “I’m here to start your training in the Will, and to explain why things have been so hard for you up to this point. It’s important for you to know. There is a good reason we fight and strive to be the best. Walk with me?”

  I hesitated for only a second. He was promising answers. I’d had far too few of those. Still, I was anxious after the previous day. “What happened to needing me to answer questions? Is that just to be done now?”

  Arthos shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m one of the Wardens who is assigned to train new recruits. I know that they say you’re very strong, and that there was some unusualness involving your water test, but that matters little. I’m here to make you the best you can be. When I
finish with you, only a fool would stand in the way of you and your Will. You’ll be my apprentice for the next few months, maybe longer if you show the expected aptitudes.” He grinned down at me. “We’re all Wardens, you see, but different Wardens concentrate on different skills.”

  He went on as he urged me to follow him. He almost had a bit of a skip to his step. “There are four classes of Warden, but each class has divisions within itself. The first of the four is the Servitors. Their job is to serve the Will by spreading the message of its profound power. They do tasks for the common man beyond the city wall, tasks that allow them to display their mastery and help simplify the lives of those they come in contact with.” He explained. I’d never heard of these Servitors before. I thought it sounded surprisingly nice, but he had a strange look on his face that told me he wasn’t divulging everything here. Wardens loved their secrets.

  “Next there are the Scholars. They study the magic of the Will, and serve as our teachers. They design the curriculum at the schools and they even brought us the power of the doors. They are a cornerstone of our power and the spread of the Iron Will. Most of them stay in the city or at least near its borders, though some do travel further as needed.” He gave me a wink. “I am a member of the Scholars.”