The Iron Road
Near Waenchester
9th Bell of the Afternoon
30th of Summersbyre, 1341
The dead man's soul bayed for blood in my mind.
Fourteen of us rode out to see a man executed, leaving Waenchester's protective walls as the sun crowned. Twelve wore the livery of the reeve's guard, one wore the gold leaf cloak of the reeve himself. And I rode among them in my dirty grey coat and blood red hose, a floppy hat pulled down to protect my eyes from the rising sun.
The guards were little more than boys, their horses as jumpy as they were. Though we kept to the enclosed tracks of the Road, guarded by regular wrought iron posts, few could hide the worried glances they cast into the gloomy woods beyond. I ignored them. I felt sick. The Duke's ale was potent stuff. Still, it was the best remedy I had found to lessen the screaming voices.
Darkness, magic and heat haunted the world beneath the trees, leaving little room for air or light. The horses suffered more than we did – white foamy lather already coated the back of his neck and shoulders. I stared straight ahead, trying to ignore the poor sod, hands bound in front of him, stumbling along behind the reeve. The prisoner was old and bent, his body gnawed by hunger and the end of a long hard summer. His clothes were ragged and covered in dust from the road. Though he could barely open his eyes where they had beaten him, he still glared at me when he got the chance.
Brandon Thelpson, the guard who had accompanied me in my investigations, pulled his horse over beside me, humming softly. He glanced at me, then grunted.
"What?" I growled. Drink and guilt make for poor bedfellows. I had seen more than my fair share of men die. I was not enthusiastic about seeing another, especially when the man was to die because of me.
"You don't look happy." It was almost a question.
"Happy?" I peered up at him from beneath the brim of the hat. "Why would I be happy?"
"To see the Queen's Justice done. To see a man punished for his crimes. To see…"
To see a man die for protecting his family? To watch him tied to a tree and left to the mercy of the fae? No, I wasn't happy. I had been given this contract a week before, handed to me by a nameless clerk. Someone had murdered the Duke's son, stabbed him three times with a knife then left him to bleed to death in a pig's pen. The local constabulary had failed to find anything and the Duke had turned to the Guild. Someone had decided it was a lost cause so they sent me, not expecting me to solve the case. I had accepted, hoping I could do some good.
- Good? Faw!
I bit back a sigh at the voice in my head.
- I wondered when you would wake up, I thought. I could sense my constant companion's amusement.
- Well, what time of the morning do you call this? The sun is barely up.
- The Queen's Justice does not wait for breakfast, I replied wryly.
- The Queen's Justice can suckle on my…- What do you want, Lucan?
- Want? I was trying to get some sleep until you started thinking so loud. Besides, what good did you think you would do? What were you expecting to find? A conspiracy? A strange murder? You should know by now that the reason for all crimes is either money or sex.
I scowled. The guard blanched slightly and allowed his horse to fall back a few paces. 'ssBlood, did I look that bad?
Lucan was right, though. Once I had reaped fragments of the dead man's soul, a few days of wandering the man's estates, haunting his usual haunts and speaking to his friends, lovers and enemies brought me a soul-vision of him tumbling this farmer's two daughters, his guards looking on and laughing at their screams for mercy. Not hard to envision the rest.
- Go away, Lucan.
This time, I heard him chuckle. Then he vanished away into some distant part of my head.
Lord Lawrens Lucan. The first man whose soul I reaped, the only one who stayed with me. I rarely reap a soul at the moment of death, when the soul is still relatively sane. Most of the time it is fragments, torn pieces that drift somewhere in my mind like gossamer threads, rising to the surface when I see or smell or do something to trigger them. I've only ever reaped two sane souls. Lucan was the first. And so he sits, somewhere in the back of my head. Offering advice at the worse possible moment.
Murmured curses filled the air as the reeve hailed us to stop in a clearing a few miles from the city. The regular lines of iron posts branched out in a circle before narrowing again as the Road vanished into the woods on the far side. A single stone post, carved with arrows and distances, rose in the middle. While the guards spread out in ceremonial fashion, I took off my hat and began to wave it in front of my face to create some air. I studied the post. I found it hard to imagine that this place had once been the biggest crossroads in the South, where the old King's Road met the new High Way. Before the Change. Before the Woods.
The criminal was forced to his knees before the reeve, who sat his horse with all the cold dignity required of the Queen's Justice. He stared down at the man as the Master of the Duke's Horse read out the charge.
"Hawold Kepstowe, farmer from the Blue Hills, you are accused of the murder of Lord Kelwin Brandenstock, lord of Leevingsbrooke and the Blue Hills, son of Duke Mawthew Brandenstock, Duke of Hallow. Will you plead?"
Hawold stared past the reeve and the soldiers. Right at me. His eyes burned, dry as a bone left in the summer sun. A thousand curses sprang from those eyes. I rubbed a shaking hand over the back of my neck – out here, so close to the Woods, curses had meaning. I could feel a headache coming on.
One of the guards surged forward, kicking the farmer to the dust of the clearing. He reached down, grabbing Hawold by the scruff of the neck and forcing his head up. "You were asked a question, dog."
"I'll no plead," Hawold said.
The guard went to slap him again, but the reeve's voice boomed across the clearing.
"Let him be."
Frowning, the guard did as he was told, though not before delivering a swift kick to the farmer's rear end.
The reeve turned to me. "Who accuses this man?"
With a bitten off curse, I nudged Ancel forward. "I do."
"On what basis?"
"On the basis of my solemn word."
"And whose word is that?"
"The word of Daniel Theorwood, member of the Thieftaker's Guild." A word that until a few months before would have meant nothing.
The reeve nodded, turning away from me. I wished I could turn and ride away, but I had to see this through to the bitter end.
There were more questions and answers, though all of them avoided the subject of what the Duke's son had done to this man's daughters. Finally, the reeve barked a command. Two of the guards came forward, sweat breaking out on their foreheads. They lifted Hawold to his feet, using their knives to cut away his clothes. Once he was naked, they turned and marched him to the edge of the clearing. Both of them paused, one of them casting a last glance back at the reeve, as if hoping he might order someone else to do what came next. The reeve stared at them impassively. With visible sighs, both men stepped over the edge of the clearing and into the Woods.
We all sat our horses and watched. The two guards, eyes darting here and there every few seconds, marched the man as quickly as possible to a tree. They pushed him, back to the trunk, lifting his hands above his head. One of them began to run a rope around and around the tree and the farmer, binding him securely to the bark. By now, the farmer was weeping softly. He pissed himself, liquid splatter soaked up in the bone dry earth. My headache was getting worse.
As the first guard wrapped the rope around the tree, the other one pulled a hammer and nail from his pocket. I winced. I had heard about these 'sacrifices' as executions, but this was the first time I had witnessed one. I forced myself not to turn away as the guard lifted the rusty old hammer high above his head. There was a swish of metal through air, a hollow thump and a scream.
Blood burst forth from the man's palm, dark as old wine. It began to drip down his forearm, his chest, his legs. Blood and tears mingled with the man's piss at his feet, the parched soil drinking it eagerly.
Once the ropes were tied off, both men walked away as quickly as possible, not even looking back. As soon as they had crossed the iron line, the reeve rode forward.
"In the name of Queen Guinueth Thorne, Queen of Stonemoor and Pent, Lady of the Rayn Isles, Mistress of the Kent, the Ath and Edish, and by the power invested in me by the name of Lord Mawthew Brandenstock, Duke of Hallow and Warden of the South, I do sentence you to a day and a night spent in the Wyrding Wood. May the fae sound your soul and decide your guilt. And if they should find you guilty, may the Lady have mercy on your soul." The reeve lifted his hand and made the sign of the Tree.
The farmer began to scream.
The heat was almost unbearable as we rode back to Waenchester, the man's screams pursuing us. I could feel something building in the back of my head, the unmistakeable taste of magic in the back of my throat. I tried to hurry along, but now that the reeve had no further need for me I was forced to the back of the group. The wind had died, leaving us riding through air so thick it felt like treacle.
My head was beating like a drum, as if someone was taking the blunt end of a staff to my temples. I gritted my teeth against the pain, rubbing at the back of my neck to try and relieve the pressure. It kept building and building though, until the pain was so intense I could hardly see the road in front of me. Just when I thought it could not get any worse, the summons came upon me.
I have dealt with magicians long enough to recognise a mental summons when I feel one. They do not come in pictures, nor do they use words. Instead, I was overcome by an absolute necessity to be where the summoner was. Added to that urge was a distinct identity marker, a flurry of impressions that are as clear and unmistakeable as blood on fresh snow. There was no doubt in my mind who was summoning me.
My mistress needed me. She was in Armacand. I had to get there as quickly as possible.
Summoning spells take a lot of effort, a lot of blood and energy for the one doing the summoning. For the person being summoned, it is rather like I would imagine it feels to be hit by three bolts of lightning while holding an alchemycal collecting rod and standing in a pool of freezing water.
I yelled once and then the darkness enveloped me.
I woke up in my room at the Juniper Branch inn. The sun shone through open curtains, high in the sky and beating down on my face. I felt around – I was on the bed, still dressed as I had been that morning. Someone was sitting by the bed, pressing a cloth dripping with cold water on my cheeks and forehead.
Trying to move sent waves of nausea, pain and dizziness throbbing down my back and sides. I felt exhausted. All I wanted to do was to lie back down in the bed, curl up and let the sun rise and fall a few more times before I got up again. Unfortunately, the remains of the summons still echoed through my mind, that urgent need to be in Armacand pulling on me like a boarhound at a cat's guts.
"What… happened?" I managed to say.
The figure by the bed moved into the light slightly. Mistress Joclyn was the innkeeper, a widower who seemed to want to mother every stray man or woman who asked her for board. At that moment, I wouldn't have had her any other way.
"They carried you in an hour past," she said. "You were running a fever, mumbling something about Armacand and a mistress." She looked at me, as if she had no doubts what kind of mistress I was talking about. I was too weak to defend myself. "I made them bring you up here straight sharp and got some cold water from the well put in a bucket. You looked like half a ghost."
"I… I have to go."
"None of that now," she said, her voice hardening. "This is no time to be playing the man. What you need is to have a good night's rest and a proper breakfast in the morning. That'll be more than enough time to…"
"Where are my gloves?" I didn't like the sheer panic that slipped into my voice. Seeing my hands, red raw and skin flaking, bare against the white sheets, though… My heart was beating so hard, I was surprised that Mistress Joclyn couldn't hear it.
"Your gloves? They're over there by the window."
"I need them." I forced my voice to calm. "Please."
Mistress Joclyn looked at me again, as if wondering what kind of strange things I was hiding in those gloves. I would have sworn that she peered inside each one before picking them up and bringing them over to me. I let her drop them on the bed before picking them up. Ss'lud, what if she had taken my hand while I was out? I shuddered to think what people would have thought if they found me unconscious and her body dead and cold by my side.
"You see?" she said, mistaking my shiver. "You've still got some kind of fever. Never mind the state of your hands. Now, you lie back and…"
"No!" I growled. She jumped, her eyes widening. I forcibly softened my voice. "I need to leave, Mistress Joclyn. Before I left this morning I got some… bad news from home. I have to be back in Armacand by night fall."
I felt like a whoreson for playing on her motherly instincts like that, but if I didn't get on the road soon that summons would start to have some… unfortunate side effects.
It worked. Though she frowned at me a number of times, Mistress Joclyn let me sit up and then helped me to stand. I waved off her offers for help dressing and asked her to have one of the boys prepare Ancel to leave. I travel light, carrying only a little bag with two changes of clothes, so even in my weakened state I was ready to go in a matter of minutes. I hurried downstairs, or rather hobbled, in time to see Ancel being led out by the reins.
Mistress Joclyn gave me another of her frowns, but the moment my money bag appeared she was all business, calculating time and food and water so that I left with my bag a good five silver coins lighter. Ancel had obviously not liked my reaction to the summons – he danced away the first time I tried to mount him. Setting a firm hand to his bridle, I calmed him down and whispered a few fae words in his ear. Waving a hand to Mistress Joclyn, I pushed my hat down on my head and clucked Ancel into motion.
The sun was now a fiery ball in the clear blue sky. The heat had increased, leaving me covered in sweat within moments even though I only wore a light shirt and hose. Ancel lumbered along; normally he was frisky, prancing around and playing the fool but the heat seemed to have left him listless. The sounds of the city were overwhelming, hiding even the sound of the horse's shoes on the cobbles.
Most of the buildings we passed were a good two or three stories shorter than what we were used to in Armacand. I passed over Kings Bridge, the turgid waters of the Lichen visible through the gaps in the boards. Off to one side I could just about make out the towers of Our Lady's Cathedral and the rose-thorn flags flying above Waenchester Castle.
The city wall loomed ahead. I found myself surrounded by a flow of people, most of whom were heading in the opposite direction back into the city. Ancel regained some of his vigour, shouldering men and women aside. I smiled apologetically to the farmers, clerks, lawyers and apprentices who were pushed away, but I patted Ancel on the side encouragingly when no one was looking. A few minutes and we were at the Iron Gate, framed on either side by the statues of the two ancient kings, Ban and Bors. A quick show of my papers, signed and sealed by the Duke himself, and I was through the gate and out on the Road.
The summer heat kept the road good, so as soon as we were out of the bustle that surrounds any city for a few miles in either direction, I was able to give Ancel his head. He sprang forward like a pitbull in a bear pit, and by the time we reached the clearing where the farmer had been left that morning, we were going too fast to hear his screams. By late afternoon, we were a few miles from Armacand. Relief flooded me as we crested the Crelterns. The Woods spread out before me like an ocean of dark green firs, oaks and spruces, a carpet that extended to the true ocean seven miles away. My eyes rose further until I could see the dancing lights of the city far off in the water. Armacand. Capital of the Kingdom of Isles. One of the Seven Cities that survived the Great Change.
Home.
I guided Ancel back into the Woods reluctantly. Goddess, it had felt good to be out of those cursed trees. Riding back into them felt like riding into a furnace. Still, a small sea breeze managed to force its way beneath the canopy. I enjoyed the feel of it on my face until a stray gust caught up my hat. I reached out to catch it, my fingers brushing the felt, then the wind had it. It tumbled through the air and landed a few steps away. Just on the other side of the iron posts.
Cursing, I leaned back in the saddle, bringing Ancel to a stop. She whinied, unhappy at having to halt in this cursed place. I could understand her reluctance, but I patted her, whispering in her ear, then slid off the saddle. A few steps brought me to the edge of the Road. I stopped, thinking back to the farmer's screams that morning.
Twilight reigned even at noon in the dominion of the trees. Trunks rose like columns in some ancient temple, bark the colour of rich earth. Moss covered the branches that twisted and turned into semblances of limbs, joints giving way to smaller and smaller tributaries, like the Tinian estuary. Rocks littered the forest floor, otherwise barren and devoid of life. A quiet world, silent as the grave.
- Now why would you want to go in there?
"ss'Blood, Lucan," I hissed.
- It is only a friendly warning, Daniel.
- I just wish you'd warn me before you do that, I responded, in my head this time.
I sensed more than heard his amusement.
- Perhaps you would prefer I announce myself with drums and trumpets.
I scowled.
- Next time, keep your comments to yourself until…
- Until you make a big mistake.
- Leave me alone, Lucan.
This time, I heard him chuckle. Then he vanished away into some distant part of my head.
Shaking my head, I turned my attention back to my hat. The wind had caught it up again, rolling it a few steps further into the Woods. Ss'lud, I loved that hat. Telling myself that only a fool would risk leaving the Iron Road for a hat, I stepped off the road and into the Woods.
A sudden stillness marked my passage into the fae world, as if the trees had held their breath the moment I set foot on the earth. The only sound was a faint whispering that buzzes in the ear. Then came the indefinable sense of power running in the soil. Magic lived here. Powerful magic.
I knew what waited if I stayed here long enough. I would begin to feel the magic more clearly, I would begin to hear the whispers properly. I shouldn't linger.
I scrambled over to my hat, bent down to pick it up and set it firmly on my head, screwing it down until the felt almost touched my ears. I straightened, ready to return to the Road. And I saw her.
A little girl stood barely ten feet away from me. She wore a green dress that shimmered and shifted like water. Sucking her thumb and holding a ragged old doll loosely in her arms, she stared at me with big eyes, green as her dress. And she smiled.
I just stood there for a moment, looking at her. I had never seen anything more unexpected. More so in that she seemed to be mortal, not fae-kind. How could I tell? I'm not sure. Something in the eyes, maybe, a reflection of a mortal soul. I know a little about souls. Still. A little mortal girl, alone in the Woods.
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing would come out. Her smile widened. I realised suddenly that I couldn't move. I couldn't even blink my eyes. Somehow, this tiny little girl had cast some kind of spell on me. I struggled madly against the binding, thrashing this way and that, beating my arms and kicking my legs. Or at least I tried to. In reality, I managed little more than a grunt.
By the Goddess, she had me trapped. How could I have been such a dolt? I knew the dangers of leaving the Road's protection. I knew what waited in the gloom. I had waited there, too, in another life. And now she had caught me up in a web like a fly. I wanted to scream.
Then, as quickly as it had come over me, the binding vanished, leaving me free. As the spell disappeared, I stumbled and fell, my efforts to struggle forward carrying me on. Catching myself with my hands, I scraped my knees and felt the fabric of my gloves rip on the rocks that littered the earth. I cursed. By the time I looked up, the girl had disappeared.
In her place were two fae. They were naked and obviously female, their breasts dropping ponderously to their bodies. Red mottled skin clashed with their yellow eyes. Sharp orange teeth showed through cracked lips as they smiled at me.
One of them opened her mouth.
"Brother," she hissed and opened her arms to embrace me.
