Dormancy Page 4

  As he crested the hill where it evened out around his home, he saw a familiar sight. His aging father sat in the forge, hunched over the bellows. A cuirass, unfinished and unpolished, rested beside him as he dozed at his workbench. Koh relaxed at the sight of his father, a smile pulling upwards at the corners of his lips.

  “It’s good to see you too, father,” he said, stepping inside.

  His father’s eyes opened, and a smile creased his features. He worked hard, and Koh admired that about him. His skin wrinkled with old age, and had long since drained of color. His hair shined silver and his hands shook when they moved, yet he still worked tirelessly and did all he could to keep himself and Koh living comfortably.

  “You’re home!” He said, relieved. He didn’t move to get up from where he had nodded off, and instead made a tired gesture to the finished breastplate for Lord Eywell. “I thought I’d finish up for you while you were gone. A little bird told me about the banquet.”

  “Brunhild,” Koh shook his head, shoulders rising and falling in defeat. “I knew she’d send a message ahead to you. Just can’t keep her mouth shut about anything, can she?”

  “You still love her, even if she’s a pain in your ass,” his father joked.

  “I do. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have her around.” Koh admitted. He limped further into the forge. It occurred to him to mention the incident at the inn – but he wouldn’t, unless asked first. “She and I are going to meet again in two days. She’ll bring Aspen and Gale for the trip back to Lyon, to cut down our traveling time a little and to help carry back Eywell’s new armor.”

  “It’s been a while since you’ve seen Gale, hasn’t it?”

  “Only about a month. He’s been getting his use in transporting rations in the north to Annwyn.” He shrugged, moving to set down his pack and the meats on a workbench nearby.

  “I see you went and saw Miss Banes,” his father said.

  “I did. If you want to go cook these for us, I’ll get to work on the designs for Lord Eywell,” said Koh with a smile. As much as traveling wore him down, home rejuvenated him. He loved every second he spent here. Others often called him a cynic for denouncing myths and tales of wild adventure. Yet, when it came to pleasures of the home and heart, he could unabashedly love them. He wished things could never change here.

  His father pushed himself up from where he sat, moving to the workbench to take the meat Koh had set down. As he passed on his way to the stairs, he placed a firm hand on Koh’s shoulder and smiled warmly.

  Koh spent the next two days working ceaselessly on the designs Lord Eywell had commissioned into the armor his father prepared for him. In his spare moments he sat out by the creek and sketched.

  On the second day, a caravan passed through.

  They sent chills down his spine.

  The lead horseman of the caravan wore all black, their face obscured by a cloak. They did not stop in Berdrin. They only continued down the road in silence. The shopkeepers and tradesmen watched warily from their windows, before they drew closed their curtains.

  Koh’s stomach sank as he watched them, and his head pounded terribly as they moved through the main road. Something about them chilled the air. Koh left the forge for the time it took the black-robed men to ride out of sight.

  The incident called to mind a fairy tale passed between the people who lived in these mountains. Just before disaster, a black-clad rider would pass through each village in the way. It would warn the people of their fate before disappearing into the dark again. Some versions of the tale said that if you rode with him, he would take you to the afterlife and spare you the hardship soon to come. The people said the black rider came from the fey, the same as the house brownies and the Aos Si.

  Other stories told that the black rider came from Morwen, the nation of the south. The sight of Morwen elves meant ill fortune. Many a time in the history of the northern nations, an elf brought disaster riding in upon their coattails, and thus Morwen’s borders closed. The old tale of the elven rider remained to frighten children into returning home before dark.

  Koh dreamed of dragons again. Amid the swirling darkness of his mind, two eyes ignited again in the inky smoke and narrowed at Koh. He could not see the beast they belonged to in the shadows, but from the size of them he knew it to be great.

  He found himself reaching for it. Hand outstretched, he placed it on the end of the beast’s snout.

  Pain shot through his body from his fingers to his chest. It burned like fire, eating away at him, devouring him from within. He looked down at himself and saw only light. Bright white and red flame enveloping his skin. It burned away at him, ate at his heart and melted away his flesh from his bones, exposing muscle and tearing him apart.

  He screamed and cried, begged and pleaded for it to stop. His lungs ached and his throat had long since torn itself to shreds, drops of blood decorating his lips each time they parted. The dragon only looked on in silence, testing him.

  The bones of his fingers began to dissolve away into ash, flesh and muscle cords to protect him from the heat having melted away, and still the flame did not relent. It had taken root inside of him, nothing able to extinguish it now. But the more it burned, the more he felt as if it had become part of him. Something irreplaceable that spread its roots deep into his body, intertwining with him.

  Grasping with fingers that were not there, he pried at his chest, wanting to tear it open and pull out the mass of burning roots bundled in between his ribs. Tears streamed down his cheeks, evaporating as they fell from his chin, steam hissing around his body. He’d long since collapsed onto his knees, doubled over in pain. From his back he felt flesh rip and tear, and some new, ethereal limb extended from his shoulders, made of flame. He felt his nose lengthen and stretch, felt bone snap and his form begin to change in a manner nothing short of excruciating. His teeth elongated and sharpened, his tongue became heavy and thick and incapable of speaking. His breaths heated to the same intensity as the fire in his body.

  The beast only looked on in silence, indifferent to his suffering.

  Koh awoke in a cold sweat. Shaken by his nightmare, he only laid there, trying to get his bearings again. Weakly, he curled in his fingers to be sure they still remained. A shaky breath in and out shattered the silence as he laid there in the dark, the early morning sunrays spilling in through his window. The silence in place of the usual birdsong felt more unnatural this morning than ever.

  4

  Brunhild hummed as she and Koh waited in the line of guests to be allowed into the castle grounds.

  “You’d think Lord Eywell would give us priority entrance or something. You’ve got his armor, after all.” She said, idly tossing stones off the road and into the bushes. “If he wants to put it on display, he ought to let us in sooner.”

  “It’s almost the dead of winter,” said Koh. “He’d rather allow the fur traders in before the other merchants.”

  “Fair enough,” Brunhild sighed and tossed down her handful of pebbles onto the road, then wiped away the dirt.

  The sun gave up its final struggles as they waited out in the cold. In its death throes, it illuminated the moon above, which in turn cast cold white light down upon the castle grounds. In stillness, the moonlight seemed to freeze over each figure waiting out in the cold. Warm mist with each breath floated up into the cloudy night sky.

  Hungry clouds waited at the edges of the moon as it hung over the castle, muddying its bright silhouette. Round and full, it illuminated the winter banquet well, stark white light outlining the tops of the trees. Inside the castle grounds, warm-colored lamplight flooded the halls, painting the castle stones vibrant yellow and orange. From the road it appeared a bastion in the chilling touch of Llamrei.

  The gates parted for them and they entered the castle grounds. The two travelers tied their horses in the stables and made their way across the green, towards the noise that echoed across the castle grounds.

  Some of Eywell’s castle s
ervants had come to take the armor Koh had crafted. Koh recognized each one of them – all of them were familiar faces after spending so much time around these grounds.

  One of the servants, a rounder boy by the name of Alfred, gave Koh a little wave and a smile as he passed. Koh returned the gestures absently. He looked off somewhere distant, eyes staring blankly into the woods nearby. A light buzzing itched at the back of his head.

  Koh and Brunhild followed behind the group of servants. Brunhild had already begun exchanging conversation with Alfred, being the most social of the servants. He carried with him a folded pile of furs and struggled with them greatly, trying his best not to drop them. They piled up to his chin and he struggled to keep a hold on them as they sagged in his grip.

  “So, what particular flavor of snot-nosed nobles am I gonna have to deal with tonight?” Brunhild asked the boy, leaning down to rest her elbow on his shoulder.

  The boy shrugged her off, nearly dropping his pile of pelts in the process. Brun leaned down to help keep them steady.

  “The Northeastern Fur Company will be present. As will East Albion Trading Company, Yu Ore Refinery, a few priests from the churches around Ochren, and the Falkner’s Guild.”

  “The Masonry Guild wasn’t invited this year?”

  “They chose not to attend on their own.”

  “Strange. Any ideas why?”

  “They’ve been underpaid recently by some of the attending nobles. Not Eywell, of course. But I’m sure you can understand the animosity nonetheless.”

  “You mentioned Yu Ore Refinery. Color me surprised by that one. What made them choose to show up this year?”

  “Eywell invited them himself. He thought they would be able to strike a relatively good deal with the wainwrights present.”

  “Why them?”

  “Eh, something about how they don’t want to deal with Tero-Brun anymore. Owain wants to impose tariffs on Wyverian Ore.”

  “Absurd,” Brunhild scoffed. “Wyverian Ore’s better than whatever they think they can get from overseas. It’s worth the high price.”

  “But, you see, they would rather pay their commission to a company, and not a government. Tero-Brun has quality goods, assuredly, but Yu Ore Refinery doesn’t have a political motive.”

  “… Suppose that’s fair. Pay to the workers, not to the country,” Brunhild said, defeated. “And why East Albion Trading Company? I’m less surprised to hear they’ll be here than Yu Ore, but I didn’t think those stingy assholes wanted to involve themselves with nobles.”

  “While nobles would try to take larger cuts,” Alfred said, nodding along with Brunhild. “The number of merchants here that would make a favorable split with the company to have it carry their goods is larger than usual.”

  “So they’re here to deal with the other guests instead of their hosts,” Brunhild said. “Smart play.”

  The voices faded from Koh’s ears as he fell into a slower pace than them and slipped further behind the main party. Something had begun to bother him, his throat tightening and his heart dropping to his gut. His eyes watched the woods, fear spiking in the depths of his mind, the hair on the back of his neck pricking up in unease. His gaze combed the shadows in the trees, searching for anything out of place.

  A shiver traveled up Koh’s spine as he walked across the palace grounds, the frost spread across the hard ground crunching under his boots. His meandering pace stopped entirely after a moment. Something drew his vision up toward the half-obscured moon. Cloud banks heavy with the coming snows pulled at its luminous rim and distorted its shape, casting odd shadows over the grounds Koh stood upon.

  Just for a moment, he thought a shadow moved across the castle rooftops. He swore that out of the corner of his eye, something obscured the moon just for an instant.

  Amber eyes narrowed and his head canted as he looked off into the darkness. He turned his body to better face where he saw the shadow from. The wind around him stopped blowing. He stood in silence, an unmoving figure in the dark, trying to discern if he had truly seen something, or if it was a trick of his imagination.

  Only the stillness of the woods met his scrutiny, and the trees kept silent of their secrets. The cold bit at his nose and his ears as he stood still. If he moved, he may miss it.

  Something tugged at his fur coat. His heart nearly stopped.

  “Are you going to stand here all night, child?” Enid’s voice broke the frozen silence.

  “Don’t frighten me, please,” said Koh. He placed a hand on his chest and breathed out a deep sigh of relief, fog billowing from his lips. His shoulders lolled back and relaxed.

  Only the brownie, he told himself. She must have been the shadow he saw. Everyone knew of the fey and their infamous tricks, after all.

  Though, telling himself as such didn’t seem to calm the fear roiling in the back of his mind.

  “You’ve fallen far behind your company, Pendragon,” said Enid, crossing her arms. Her ears laid back and her nose wiggled slightly. Then she tilted her head to one side to gesture to his company as they entered the castle halls far ahead of him. The gently falling snows already began to dust over their footprints.

  Koh only turned his head back toward the moon, and the source of the shadow.

  “I swear that just for a second, I saw something…” He trailed off, gaze tracing back toward the trees. His throat tied itself in knots and nausea overwhelmed him. Yet, only the trees swayed as the wind picked back up. “I’m sorry, Enid. I’ve been terribly on edge these last few days.”

  Her nose wrinkled as she sniffed at him. The little faerie bristled.

  “You’re hiding things. What don’t you want anyone else to know?”

  He finally tore his eyes from the rooftop between him and the moon, as the clouds finally drifted entirely across its surface and the light faded, plunging the castle green into shadow.

  “… I had a dream the other night. Something lit me on fire. It was terrible, Enid. It burned like hell, and I felt the pain even after I awoke. It… It felt as though my bones had all broken at once,” he said. “As if my stomach had turned the wrong way around and began to eat away at me from within, and all my flesh tore itself to pieces and melted from my body.”

  “… How long ago was this dream?”

  “Three nights,” said Koh. “I still run my fingers across my skin and swear it feels like stone. Like it’s been cracked and broken into shards.”

  “Then the pain hasn’t faded yet?”

  “No. It keeps returning, each time I think it might finally be gone. Dreams are meant to be just… dreams. They aren’t meant to hurt, let alone for this long. Are they…?”

  “Some say dreams are premonitions.” Enid said.

  The wind picked up again, howling across the rooftops of the lord’s castle. The sheer cut through Koh’s fur coat and chilled him to the bone. He shuddered, either from the feeling of having eyes on him, or from the cold. He couldn’t tell which bothered him more.

  “Let’s get you inside, shall we?” Enid grabbed him by the bottom of his coat and tugged him toward the door. Warm light spilled out from within, the halls inside lit by torches and fireplaces dotted along the rooms and halls. The stone walls of Eywell’s castle gave shelter from the storm outside, and the faint, distant sounds of song and socializing filtered through the windows.

  “Wait,” said Koh, his voice swallowed up by the howling wind and swirling snow. The brownie stopped, ears perked to listen. “… Enid. Have you ever heard anything about a… red knight?”

  The brownie’s ears laid back.

  “… Koh,” she said. “I’ve looked after you for a very long time. I’ve watched you grow from as tall as me to the strong smith you are now.”

  “Enid—” He whispered, nausea bubbling in his gut again. “You’re frightening me.”

  “Koh. Something evil lurks beyond these walls tonight. It hides in the storm where not even my faerie eyes can see it,” she said quietly. “Stay alert tonight. Ple
ase, promise me that.”

  Koh inhaled sharply. Fear stung through his veins like ice. He nodded, uncertain.

  “… Enid. What is the red knight?” He asked.

  She narrowed feline eyes and looked off into the darkness as the snow came down harder around them. It swirled in sheets around them, obscuring the two of them from sight. The darkened forest nearly disappeared on the other side.

  “A great king,” she said. “Who died a very terrible death. Whose own soul devoured him where he stood, and he burned to ash with nothing left to bury.”

  Koh’s eyes fell to the snow beneath their feet, recalling the dream, and how the flames had danced along his skin and eaten him alive. He sighed.

  “… Let’s go inside,” said Koh. “Perhaps a drink or two will take my mind from this. Maybe it’s all just our imagination.”

  “Imagination…” Enid repeated. “I hope you’re right. Come on now. Let’s get out of this cold before the storm grows worse.”

  Koh nodded and followed along, only one more backwards glance given to the place he saw the shadow before the snow swallowed up the world in white.

  Inside, people gathered in the halls, drinks in hand and smiles on their faces, blissfully unaware of the storm brewing just beyond the castle walls. Servants bustled back and forth with trays of food and drink in hand, or carried goods to the main hall where the bulk of the guests had congregated.

  Each time he tried to stop, Enid pulled harder at his hand. He stumbled after her, trying carefully not to step on or trip over the small fey creature. She waved and gave brief greetings to some of the guests she recognized, but remained silent otherwise. Koh thought to tell her she didn’t need to be so on edge. Upon thinking of her fretful ways and the likelihood she would take his advice, he decided against it.

  Most of the guests had gathered in a large ballroom. Walls of white marble and carpets lined in red reflected the orange light that radiated from a decorative chandelier at the center of it all and lamps along the pillars. Dark oaken tables lined the near wall and held plates stacked high with various sampling platters. Drinks, cheeses, meats, and several mouth-watering plates of scones had been set out. Barrels of cider and finely aged wine sat at the ends of the tables, set out just for the occasion.