by Daniel Bavister
in Issue 98, March 2020
Fourteen years have passed since I became a Silent Seeker. But today I finally realised it is impossible, what the priests taught us during our three years of training for this role, about locking up your past in a deep dark place inside of you. Now I know that my past is with me, that it has always been with me, and that my past cannot be caged.
This morning I looked out of my window, as I have done every day since I stepped into my chamber, although this time was the first time I truly saw.
I saw beyond the barred windows of my chamber, and beyond the Citadel’s austere curtain wall, to where Old Wood lay. And the black leaves were trembling nervously on the branches of the black trees. For it is autumn, and with the passing of the days the falling of the leaves approaches.
“I must return to my people’s world,” I say, “for I do not belong in this world of humans.”
I slump into my hardened wicker chair and the years roll away as I reflect on the time before my fourteen years of entombment.
*
I could not see anything through the window so I clambered out of it and stood up and skirted along the precarious, crumbling stone ledge that ran the length of the monastery’s wall.
Down below the birds were flying in amorphous rings, and one fluttered up to me and asked me what I was doing in such a dangerous and strange place.
“I’m up here because I must look upon Old Wood,” I answered, and, ignoring the bird’s ceaseless protests, I reached the edge of the monastery and I leapt across and landed, just right, one hundred feet above the yard below on the stone head of a gargoyle.
There used to be many stone figures displayed on the Citadel’s curtain wall, but the regime declared them heretical according to the teachings of the Faith, and had had them struck off.
But this gargoyle was too high; there was not a ladder long enough in all of the Westwardlands to strike it off.
“You are a fool, Arnbori,” twittered the bird, before sweeping back to join the crowds of swooping birds below me.
I dug the claws on my feet and my hands into the plaster, and commanded my muscular tail to rise and wrap around the crenulations above like a rope, and so struggled onto the battlements.
There were no guards on this section of the wall. I was safe.
I brushed the dust and fragments of plaster and stone from my hands and my tail, and I stepped forwards and gazed over the edge. I could see so far across the vast expanse of Old Wood, and in those few seconds of bliss all the memories of my boyhood flooded back, of climbing up among the branches of Old Wood’s unworldly trees, and catching the fragile leaves when they fell at the height of autumn…
That place must have been only a mile away, and yet it may as well have been in a land beyond a thousand storm-tossed seas, as there was no hope of me ever returning. I saw the showers of black leaves falling from the trees, and as they fell, they faded as usual to white.
Autumn had come, the season of change, and the season of decay.
The minutes blossomed and withered one by one, until all the leaves had fallen and the sun had risen, gilding the white blanket of leaves pale gold. Then I remembered what day it was, and instantly the leaves seemed melancholy and faded, and the light of the sun seemed not quite as bright.
I glimpsed a dark thing behind me.
“What are you doing, Brother Arnbori? You do know today is the day of your ordination.”
I shuddered and turned to face him. “I apologise most graciously, Father Acton.”
He wheezed up phlegm and spat it over the side of the wall, before saying, “Oft have I spied you standing at windows, on balconies, or up here on the battlements, just staring idly into space. Does your mind contain nothing other than air?”
“No, Father Acton.”
His brows knitted. “Then do not stare into space, or people will recognise you as the half-wit you are.”
I nodded. “Yes, Father Acton.”
“And why do you not grin? For today is a day of joy.”
I grimaced. Never had I heard ‘joy’ sound so much like a curse word. “I have been thinking, Father Acton.”
“About what?”
I paused, and said, “I have been thinking about the One.”
“I wish I could believe that were true, but you are one of the shadow-folk.”
I bit my lip to stop me from acting up, composed myself and said, “What do you mean by
that?”
“Your species are heathen, non-human beasts.”
I tasted blood from where my teeth had just pierced my lip. “We worship one god. You know her name.”
“So, you do not worship the One! I knew it. You are an unbeliever -”
“Father Acton, the very thought -”
“Do not cut off my speech. Now, I will walk you to the Chapel. You are late.” He grabbed me by the arm and I did not dare refuse. I knew the consequences of refusal; it was scrawled across my body and my mind in multitudes of scars.
He took me down the spiral stair of the nearest tower, across the yard, and through the great doors of the Chapel on the eastern side of the Citadel.
“Father Acton,” muttered Father Edgar, shuffling over to us as we entered, “The Great King will soon arrive to commence the ceremony.”
“I know.”
“Do you have the wafers and wine?”
“No. That is your job.”
“But all of us are busy, and we are struggling as it is. What are you doing?”
Father Acton, despite his old body being decrepit and gaunt, lashed forth at Father Edgar. He stumbled and I caught him.
Father Acton puffed out his chest. “Am I your supreme and only commander?”
“I serve the -”
His face cracked a grin. “Am I your supreme and only commander?”
“I serve the One above all others.”
He spat in his face. “Go and find me the wafers and wine.”
Father Edgar scuttled away.
“Come with me, boy,” said Father Acton, and as he led me to my seat, I noticed a black book was sticking out of a pocket in his robes, titled: *The Alchemy of Animating Flame*. As he walked the book sunk into his pocket, and when we reached my seat he commanded me to sit. He strode to the altar, above which hung a huge banner blazoned with a circular white eye, the symbol of the One.
To one side of the altar was a table behind which stood Father Aidan, and Father Edmund was walking over, carrying three bowls of burning incense. We still wore the white robes and white cloaks of the standard monks, but the black robes and black cloaks of the Silent Seekers were piled on that table, waiting.
The sound started to simmer as more of our order took their seats, until around one hundred of our order were sitting in the seats, and I saw Father Edgar and Father Alwin arrive and go to the table, bearing trays covered by black cloths.
Father Edgar said, “We have the wafers and wine.”
“That’s good,” answered Father Aidan, “you can put them there.” His eyes darted up, and they softened as they focused on me. He ambled over to me.
“My darling Arnbori. Ah, how big you are! I remember when I first met you three years ago as if it were yesterday. How old are you now?”
I smiled; there were some priests who were truly kind of heart. “Nineteen.”
“You’ve grown up fast! Well, I’ll miss you, Arnbori.”
His eyes hardened, and he leaned in close. He spoke so low that I could only catch flickers of his speech. “The Great King and Father Acton… the Two Terrors… terrible, terrible things are going to happen… I am so sorry, so, so sorry… but we are doing our best to fight back… we won’t let them bring it to life… we won’t passively assist this evil of theirs…”
Just as he mentioned something about an Order of Love and Liberty trumpets screamed, and Father Aidan stopped speaking and hurried back to the table, and I fixed my gaze on the front.
The sound of the trumpets culminated before sweeping down again to silence, and in its place up there sprang a salvo of drumbeats, which welcomed the royal knights down the aisle, donning their onyx-black armour and wielding their onyx-black arms. And the drums were quashed by the voice of Sir Godwin, “Bow for the arrival of the Great King, the defender of the Faith, highest servant of the One, the King of the Westwardlands! May all cruel-hearted men and beasts flee before his godly grace!”
He entered last and alone, his golden crown firmly on his head, his face carved from stone, bereft of all emotion. He strutted down the aisle, his heavy cloak of fine black velvet billowing around him like smoke around a raging fire, the white eye of the One painted on his black breastplate. At the altar, he surveyed the crowd with holy eyes. They were silent, searching eyes, as crepuscular as his clothes; there was no life in those eyes, no thought or feeling, just cold untouchable power.
The Great King said, “Before embarking on your quest to serve the regime, we shall induct you. Priests, begin the ordination.”
Father Alwin and Father Edmund and Father Aidan and Father Edgar came forwards bearing gold and silver platters of wafers, and jewel-encrusted chalices of blood-red wine, which they distributed among us, and they distributed the black robes and black cloaks to all of us.
After a few minutes had passed, the Great King said, “Now that you wear your holy garb, let us to West Tower march.” And he left the Chapel’s hall with all the clattering of trumpets and the booming of drums with which he had entered, the royal knights chanting incantations as they chant at all religious ceremonies, with Father Acton gliding along beside him.
We followed in their wake, the other priests behind us. They were not armed, but all along the top of the wall there were guards wielding bows, arrows already fitted, ready to eliminate anyone who would dare attempt to escape. There were other guards, equipped with swords and axes, clad in crow-like helms, who watched us from their posts at the great doors and the gates. There were twice as many guards that day, because after the doors of our chambers closed, escape would become nothing other than a cruel dream.
That was our last chance, although nobody was foolish enough to make a run for it.
We reached the great entrance door of West Tower. The Great King stood tall on the stone steps and said, “You were all once lost. You were all once orphans, starving waifs, children traumatised by war, or unenlightened shadow-folk. But now you are Silent Seekers, servants of the One, and this is the time for rejoicing!”
The heavens crashed and screeched, and in the distance the trees of Old Wood groaned and shouted, and down streaked silver shards of sharpened ice, which pelted us so much we had to rush into the Tower.
I drifted up endless staircases and drifted down endless passages, until I arrived at the black door of my chamber.
Silence crept into the passage.
I looked down the passage to either side of me. My eyes rested on the black door directly in front of me. I stared at the door. As time passed silence crept into the passage, until the passage was crowded with a cacophony of silence.
“Arnbori, why aren’t you in your chamber?” asked a porter, appearing out of the liminal light like a terrifying wraith.
I shuddered. “Don’t I know you?”
“I used to be the Great King’s favourite, his closest adviser.”
I looked at him. I looked at him hard. “Yes, I suppose that’s why you knew my name. But I’m awfully sorry, I can’t remember what you were called.”
“I was Lord Teal.”
“Ah, yes.”
“But now I’m just a porter.”
“Yes, like I used to be Brother Arnbori, and before that I was simply Arnbori.”
“And now you have no name. Well, why don’t you enter? You’re free until tomorrow, when I’ll pass through your first batch of creatures.”
“Yes, I -”
“Enough procrastinating.”
“Yes.” I entered, closed the door, and locked it. There was a small opening in the door, big enough to fit a fist through, and I passed the key through, as we had been taught.
There was a jangling noise as the porter slid the key onto his ring of keys, and without a word of farewell he scuttled away down the passage.
I glanced around my chamber and saw a golden bell beside the door, which I could ring if I needed assistance. But I decided I would only ring it if my life was in danger. On second thought, I decided I would never ring it, because the priests had informed us that if you called a porter to open your chamber without proper justification, the regime would infer that you had been trying to escape.
The punishment for trying to escape is death.
*
I was born thirty-three summers ago, in a glade deep within Old Wood, which the shadow-folk call the shadow-realm, on the day the leaves fall from the trees in their unearthly snow. And my earliest memory is of my second birthday – my mother screeching with delight and throwing me into the air, and I outstretching my tiny hands and my tail to catch the leaves as they fell, which crumbled to white powder at my touch.
My entire boyhood was spent vagabonding around below the black boughs of that place, praying three times daily to the Blue Woman, and walking with care, each of us using our tails to sweep the path before us of all insects. We used our healing magic to restore the axe-gashes in the trees and the broken limbs of snared screech-growls and frog-lions, and we would sing and talk as we walked to everything we passed.
We would converse with everything that breathes.
This morning as usual I picked up the tray of killed magic creatures and took it to my desk and got to work carving away at their limp corpses, and filling vials with their venoms and their poisons, as we had been taught. Liquids hissed and little machines hummed, as I extracted their magical properties and filled bottles with strange green flames that danced. They were animated flames, living flames. Oft had I wondered why the regime wished us to create this living fire, but never did I cease in my required labours.
But today I decided to stand up and look out of my window at my people’s world, the shadow-realm, which is what I will call it from now on. As I looked towards those trembling leaves, I thought back to how my people lived their lives, the things they did and the things that were forbidden.
I must break out of this cage of a place, for I do not belong here. Still sitting in my hardened wicker chair, but now watching the setting sun incarnadine the sky in tones of crimson and salmon-pink, I think back to the autumn of my sixteenth year, when they took me.
We were sleeping on the snowfall of white leaves which had piled down that morning, and my mother was mimicking the music of the nightingales in the trees around us, drifting me away into a perfection of sleep. But something was troubling me, and so I sat up.
“Mother?”
“Yes, Arnbori.”
“Why do they hunt us, the humans?”
She thought deeply, her eyes intent, and said, “Because we live our lives in a different way to them; we worship the Blue Woman, and not the One. We follow her teachings, passed from father to son and mother to daughter among our people ever since she first breathed life into the world, rather than follow the teachings of the Faith.”
“Are we in danger?”
“Yes, Arnbori. You see, the Great King hires men, hunters, who are skilled with blade and bow. They used to kill the rainbow-birds for their feathers, and the griffins for their claws of platinum, but now they kill us for the chest of gold the Great King offers for each of our heads.”
“But… But that’s just terrible! How could they do such evil?”
“I know it’s hard for you to imagine. In truth, I know not why they do what they do.”
I nodded and lay back down, and my mother started to sing again, although she was unable to prevent a hint of melancholy from creeping into her notes.
There was a crunch of leaves and a burst of breath.
My mother stopped singing. I saw her sit up, and my father also, and soon the dozen or so who remained of my tribe were alert.
There were more crunches of leaves, and the sound of huge animals moving in the dark, and the clanking of metal. The movement sounds turned into a ring of sound which surrounded us, which by degrees tightened like a noose around the clearing.
Everyone got to their feet, the moonlight gilding their faces silver, their lilac eyes sparkling in the wan light and their flower-shaped mouths hanging open. My mother swiped a streak of her black hair from her white face, and my father went to her side, and they interlaced their tails in the shape of a heart.
The moon, swollen to its full, rotated to directly above us, so the clearing bloomed with deathly moonlight. The crunching of the leaves grew closer. I started to cry, despite being nearly a man. The unquiet night seemed about to burst with unseen terror.
Intense movement.
The dark spat out an arrow, and an uncle of mine crumpled down, hitting the earth like a felled tree. He started writhing around like a fish out of water, and I looked into his face and saw nothing other than agony.
Then what must have been about two dozen black shapes thundered into the clearing. Black armour gleamed on the bodies of the riders of the black shapes, and the riders gripped long lances and cruel swords which glimmered in the moonlight. The swords were long and slender and sharp and one cut through my father like a sickle through a blade of grass. My mother, her tail still clutching onto his, tried to move out of the way but the horse rammed into her. Her neck cracked and red blood drenched the blanket of white leaves.
There was no time to think. I darted away. But huge hands grabbed me and bound my arms and legs and bundled me onto the back of one of the black shapes. Soon we were sweeping between the trees, the air whooshing over us, the hooves of the vast animal pounding against the earth with the beat of a war-drum as I was swept away from the shadow-realm.
“Where have you taken me?” I asked the rider, when we had passed through the gates of the Citadel and I had been lifted off the horse and into a chair outside of the Chapel.
“You are at the capital of the Westwardlands, the seat of the Great King. I am Sir Harold, and I am acting on his orders.”
“What orders?”
“The orders not to kill any shadow-person who is younger than five-and-twenty. You looked to be of the right age, so I spared you.”
“But what are you going to do with me?”
“You shall be turned into a Silent Seeker. That is all I can tell you. You shall know more later.”
His eyes fell to his shoes, and when they rose they were glistening with tears. He whispered something, like “We are working to end this”, or “We won’t let them burn it down”, although I did not quite catch what he said exactly.
They placed me in the monastery, where I along with many other young humans and shadow-folk were taught the art of this role. We were the unwanted. We were the forgotten. We were the ones who would be locked up in West Tower and used like beasts of burden to pull the war machine of the regime forward.
Of course, the regime banned all systems of belief except the Faith, with plenty of creative punishments to deal with recusants and dissenters. But to begin with I held on to my beliefs, by whispering prayers to the Blue Woman in the long dark nights we spent in the dormitories of the monastery.
Gradually, however, I was broken. I started to pray to the One, and to dissect the creatures of the shadow-realm and extract their magical properties. But the greatest torture the regime dealt me was not the loss of my family or my beliefs; the greatest torture is this role, where I must do nothing but destroy and document, passive and aloof and stripped of liberty.
I look out of my window and see the shadow-realm, and the star-spangled empyrean is starting to blush with grey; the dawn is close. And on the morrow the leaves will fall from the trees of the shadow-realm, and my last wish in life is that I see them fall around me, that I may reach out and touch them and lie upon them, in the place that is my homeland.
I remember standing atop the Citadel’s wall and my heart filling with liquid love at the sight of that place, and I remember touching the leaves as they fell when just a babe in that place, and I decide that I shall not let the light die out, as now is the time that I escape this cage of a place.
*
I had not thought the golden bell would sound so loud. It rings and rings, the incessant metallic chiming filling the air with an unearthly noise, and every stone in the entirety of West Tower seems to shake with the force of it.
The lock clicks. I jump to my chosen hiding-place, behind a shelf. The door moans open, and the light of the porter’s lamp casts my caliginous chamber in yellow.
“Arnbori, where are you?” he asks.
*I’m sorry*, I whisper in my head, *But there’s no other option*.
The porter does not even cry out. His gold-lit eyes roll back to white, and his mouth twitches shut. And I slip the damp, foul-smelling cloth from his mouth and I lower him to the floor and roll his lightly snoring body into the centre of the room.
I step out into the passage and I close the door behind me, but not fully, so that another of the porters will discover him in the morning. But by the morning I will be far away from here.
Additional to the sleeping draught, I had taken one other artefact from my chamber’s desk: a heavy and keenly-sharpened blade. I hope I will not need to use it.
As I drift down the endless staircases, I notice a pale green glow shining through the slit windows in the stone walls. I reach the bottom of the stairs. The pale green light seeps through the cracks in the oak of the great entrance door and there is a murmur of many voices coming through it.
The light fades, plunging the room into darkness. The voices fade with it.
I open the door.
The yard is empty but through the gates of the Citadel there threads a long procession of royal knights dressed in black armour and black cloaks, and bearing banners which have the circular white eye of the One upon them, and they seem to be chanting an incantation as they chant at all religious ceremonies. At the front there are several huge black metal shapes, from one of which flows the strange pale green glow. And there are no guards up on the wall, nor are there any standing by the great doors or the gates; they must have all left with the other men and the unearthly metal things.
“Arnbori!”
I turn to my left and out of the dark emerges a familiar face.
We embrace, and I ask, “Father Aidan, what are you doing?”
His eyes are wide. “Rather, what are you doing? If they catch you, they’ll kill you.”
“What’s going on?”
He grimaces. “Well… They nearly got me, but I escaped. I was lying low until the time was right to flee, and I was just about to make a run for it when I saw you.”
“What do you mean, ‘they nearly got you’?”
“They’re purging the priests. The Great King and Father Acton have rounded them up, and they’re going to kill them. They discovered the Order.”
“What?”
“The Order of Love and Liberty. We were all secretly fighting to overthrow the Great King and Father Acton, because we can’t abide what they’re doing to the shadow-folk, and all the magic creatures for that matter. And we’ve managed to uncover something…”
“What?”
“I’ll tell you as we go, for the gates will soon close.”
I nod and together we sprint across the empty yard.
“Arnbori,” he pants through huge gulps of air, “You know how you were all tasked with extracting the magical properties from the creatures of Old Wood?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the Two Terrors, as us priests call the Great King and Father Acton, have launched a new campaign of utter extermination. And tonight they’re taking a new weapon, crafted from the substances the Silent Seekers extracted from the magic creatures, to Old Wood. They intend to burn it to the ground.”
“No!”
“There is nothing we can do, Arnbori,” he stammers, drinking down a huge barrel of air, “We must just try and escape whilst we can, and get as far away from here as possible. There is a boat, organised by the rebel royal knights, which could take us to the mainland…”
“No, Father Aidan,” I say, stopping, “I have a knife, and I don’t think I can do much with it, but just maybe I’ll be able to stop them from committing this dreadful crime. You may follow me if you wish.”
“But Arnbori, that’s just insanity! You won’t stand a chance. You’ll be killed, that’s for sure.”
“Well, if I die then at least I will be with my god. This is something I must do. This is something I must do to as part of my destiny.”
“You’re a fool,” he says, “But a bloody brave fool. Tell you what, I don’t have many years left and I have no family. If you are going to die, I shall die by your side, for the greater good.”
I nod, and a pensive smile touches my lips. “You are one bloody brave fool also.”
Soon we reach the gates and pass through them, and we wind our way down the dark road towards the procession which is a few hundred yards ahead. They have just entered the shadow-realm, and the unearthly trees are oozing a terrible green glow.
They stand hundreds of feet tall, their thousands of intertwining branches draped with thick curtains of moss that sway and mutter. And the trees speak among themselves, and their stone-hard trunks and boughs groan and twitter and whisper as if ten million nightingales were within them; the trees are voicing their discontent at the arrival of the humans.
As we enter the shadow-realm we slow down and start to creep, hiding ourselves behind the trees or clouds of shrubbery, until we are just a handful of yards from the gathered humans, and my tail wraps itself around Father Aidan’s arm and he strokes it to try and soothe my terror.
“We have come to this unhuman, pagan place,” says Father Acton, “So that our most holy leader, the Great King, may unveil what the Silent Seekers have created.”
The few hundred men, comprised of royal knights and guards and a few other members of the Citadel’s staff and the Great King’s family, gather closer round the two huge black metal shapes, their faces painted lurid green by the incandescence emitted from one of them.
The Great King steps forward, “Thank you, Father Acton. Yes, I shall unveil this godly weapon, but first… My royal knights, bring forward the dissenters.”
A cluster of royal knights rush to the huge black metal shape beside the one which the green light comes from and pulls a cloth away from it, revealing a cage, within which are Father Alwin and Father Edmund and Father Edgar.
I hear a snap of brushwood and a rustle of leaves to my left. I look but I see nothing. None of the men seem to have noticed it. I turn my gaze back to them.
“We have faced many troubles in recent days,” declares the Great King, “First, we find dissenters among the royal knights. As you know, Sir Godwin was hung, drawn and quartered, but Sir Harold is still on the loose, spreading his heretical beliefs throughout the Westwardlands. And then, among those who I trusted most, the priests, plans for my and Father Acton’s assassination.”
There are angry murmurings from the circle of men, which cover a noise from the trees up above, which sounds an awful lot like a clank of metal.
“But these troubles shall now end,” says the Great King, and he is answered by unanimous nods and shouts from the men, “for I now make Father Acton the High Bishop of the regime!”
“Yes!” all the men cry.
“And I shall carry out the sentences for these heretical priests: execution. My loyal royal knights, bring forth the pot of living fire!”
Four knights carry the huge black metal shape forward, and they spill its glowing contents onto the earth. It is a man, the size of four or five men combined, made entirely from green flame. I realise this is what our order had been unknowingly helping to create, that this is what the Great King and Father Acton had been trying to bring to life, and it is terrible and terrifying.
“Carry out the execution!” says the Great King, and the living fire nods.
He goes to the cage and rips it open, and grabs Father Edgar’s face with his flaming hand, and it crackles and hisses and melts like ice, until the priest’s entire head collapses in and crumbles into ash and decayed flesh.
“That is what you get for defying the One,” cackles Father Acton, “That is what you get for going against the regime. Now, execute the rest, and then let us burn down this accursed place.”
“No!” I cry, it being too much, and I run forwards, wielding the knife. I attempt to stab Father Acton in the neck, but a guard swings his axe into my face.
I fall, and through the haze of red I see Father Aidan draw a sword from within his robes and lay into the guards, felling one, then two, then three.
Battle-horns roar from the trees above and arrows whistle from bows and men jump down into the gathered crowd, and there is the sound of horses braying and the clatter of swords.
“Fall back!” I hear the Great King bellow, “Sir Harold has returned, the rebel royal knights have returned, there are too many! Fall back, back to the citadel, where we may light the beacons of war and draw all the forces of this nation to us!”
“What should we do with his body?” shouts a voice seemingly from far away.
“Leave it,” hisses the Great King, “Father Acton is dead. He is no use to us now. I shall choose another High Bishop at a different date. Fall back!”
And with the clash of steel singing in my ears, I fall back into the abyss.
*
“He is stirring.”
“Yes.”
I open my eyes. “Father Aidan, Sir Harold, where am I?”
“You are still in Old Wood,” says Father Aidan, “We are safe, for now. Sir Harold and his men slew many, many of the regime’s men. And they slew the living fire. And they slew Father Acton.”
“Yes,” I say, “I only wish I could see the end of these troubles.”
“You shall see the end of these troubles,” says Sir Harold, “But you must have time to heal, and so we have organised for you to go away to the mainland, to the Peace States. The boat is waiting for you at Sun Harbour.”
I nod slowly.
“Yes,” says Father Aidan, “But of course it’s your choice. We understand that you are one of the shadow-folk, that this is your homeland. We would never sever you from this land, if you wanted… If you wanted to pass away to the other realm here.”
“If I go to the Peace States,” I say, “if I am given time to heal, then may someday I return, to carry on the fight? And maybe, maybe after it is all done…”
“You could live here again?” asks Father Aidan.
I had thought that at first, but… “No. Because although my past is and has always been with me, my past cannot be lived again. No amount of lamenting or living below the black boughs of this place can brick back my family, but I can bring back peace to the Westwardlands, and fight for what is right, whether that be on the field of battle or within the houses of politics.”
“I understand,” says Sir Harold, “Well, we shall wait and see. But the most important thing for now is to get you away from here, to safety.”
“He will fight,” says Father Aidan firmly, “I know the level of his valour. He will win many victories yet.”
Sir Harold nods, and he gets up and walks away to tend to another of the wounded.
Then something damp and velvety kisses my face, followed by many more. I look up, and falling through the dappled sunlight of the dawn, the showers of black leaves of the shadow-realm fade from black to white.
“It is autumn,” I say to Father Aidan, and he gazes at me, “And autumn may be the season of decay, but it is also the season of change.”
“And what will your change be?” he asks.
I think, and say, “When I return, I will do what is right for all living things, whether they be human or one of the shadow-folk, in my people’s world or the world of humans; I will love and care for everything that breathes. That is the beauty of my people.”
“Rightly said,” he whispers.
©March 2020 Daniel Bavister
Daniel Bavister lives and writes in Dorset, England. His experience of cultural and historical sites where Vikings, Saxons, Romans, and medieval knights roamed informs his story-telling. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.