The Sword of Sighs (The Age of the Flame: Book One) (6 page)

“I was trying to hold it off me. I could feel my fingers sinking into it. How could that happen and it still be alive?”

Woran looked at the creature on the ground, already attracting flies and worms. “Because it was not alive. Nothing can truly serve the cause of the Fallen and live.”

“But it’s dead now.”

“No. Wounded. Weakened. Nightfall will heal its flesh and then it will come for you again.” Woran grabbed her by the shoulders. “Bring the goats back up into the pen now. We must get back to the house. There’s not much time.”

“But it’s barely midday—”

“Don’t argue, Sarah. Just do as I say.”

Woran’s eyes cast about from horizon to horizon. Sarah saw in his face that he was in fear of something—something far worse than the twitching Fellhound.

~ ~ ~

Back at the house, after herding the goats into their pen, Sarah found Woran poring over an old book. Its leather covers were peeled and split, the papers in it barely held in place by ancient gum and wood-glue. She walked closer and saw the woodcut graven onto the page in stark black lines. Though it was an angular and rough image, she recognised it easily enough as the beast that Barra had taken down outside. There was something else in the woodcut—a tall, dark humanoid figure.

“What is it? Do you know?”

“I’ve never seen one before, but I’ve heard tell and read enough of the old legends.”

“But you said legends were only true in their telling.”

“I did, and the Mother strike me down but I feel like my foolish words were what brought that damned thing here, although I know that’s not the truth.”

“So, what is that other thing with it?” Sarah pointed to the woodcut.

“A Fallen-born, Sarah. A creature of the Nightlands, bound to the service of the Fallen One in life and in death. The Fellhounds are their hunting dogs.”

“Just what is the Fallen One, Woran? You’ve never told me about this before.”

“It’s just a legend, an old, old legend—and that’s how it should be and should stay. A story to frighten children, but that
thing
outside was real. Mother save me, I touched it. And save us from the stink of it. And that of its masters.”

“How could it get here? You told me the Waste was a long way away, and there’s the Northway Mountains and Highmount to defend us here.”

“I don’t know how it came to be here, Sarah. I wish I did. But I know one thing for sure.”

“What’s that?”

“That we must go—before tonight, before it gets dark."

“What? But we can’t. Not tonight. Not just like that. What about the goats and the house?”

“We can and we will, Sarah. I knew this day would come the very day I took you in.”

“It came for me, is that what you’re saying? Do you know that for sure? And you didn’t tell me that either, why?”

The old man smiled tenderly, reached out and stroked a grandfatherly finger along her jawline. “Yes. I'm sorry, Sarah. I knew. I found you and I knew it was no accident. You are not from this World. You are from somewhere I don’t know. A place filled with things and people that sound fearful and wondrous all at the same time. And yet, despite that, you look like her.”

“Who?”

“A woman I loved. She would have been my wife, but war took her from me as it did my son, Joliah. You come from somewhere so very strange, and yet your face is the youthful mirror of one that is engraved upon my heart.”

“That’s why you kept saying we are the same.”

Woran sighed and nodded. “Yes. I knew for you to come to me must mean something would happen, and that you would be at the heart of it. And so you are, and so we must go. War is coming, I don’t doubt it, but I won't lose you to it. I will not see her face die twice in my lifetime. Sleep now. I will take the watch. I will burn that wretched Fellhound before it can revive, and I will see we are not surprised by its masters.”

“Woran,” Sarah said, “thank you for helping, for caring for me. I don’t feel like I deserve it.”

Woran smiled. “Thank you for warming an old man’s heart with the fire of fond memories these past three years. They have been too few, and I wish that we had more time, but it is not to be. Sleep now, Sarah. We will begin our journey before sundown.”

~ ~ ~

Sarah awoke in the evening. As she got to her feet and slipped on her leather boots, she looked out through the window and saw that it had become twilight. The light along the horizon was casting the foothills and slopes in autumnal shades. The dying sun was burning out, falling into the flames of an open furnace secreted just below the horizon and out of sight. In this brilliance, she saw a mounted figure upon the crest of the far slope. A black rider silhouetted against the last livid light of day on the horizon. A still, silent creation of shade and shadow caught and illuminated, just for a moment. It was too far away for her to make out any details, other than a slight angularity to its form.
Like a man armoured for war,
she thought, remembering Woran’s words.

She shivered.

Sarah had seen soldiers come and go along the roadways to Highmount, but not one dressed like this. Even from this distance, none of them had borne the slightest resemblance to what she was looking at across the valley. And she felt, in her heart and bones, that it was looking right back at her with eyes cut from searing coals.

Sarah stepped away from the window, took a breath, and then looked out again.

The black rider was gone.

Sarah had dressed and washed quickly before entering the parlour, expecting to find Woran there; he was nowhere to be seen. The nights were becoming long, cold, dark things, and she swallowed hard, thinking about what that Black Rider might do once the light of day vanished completely and shadows were spread everywhere to cover its approach.

I should not have let him see me,
she thought.

Though how could she even think he had seen her from such a distance?

Sarah cupped her hands and blew onto the ashes of the hearth fire, smiling as she watched the embers blossom into faint tongues of flame that spat out handfuls of sparks.

It’s not yet ashes
, she thought,
there’s still some warmth to be found
.

She stood, rubbing her shoulders against the night’s cold, which was seeping through the house, and went to the stove to see if there was much stew left over. She spooned what was there into a bowl and ate in silence. Woran was not there and neither was Barra. Woran often took the little mongrel with him when he had to collect something from the Taproots or Saltwines. Barra wasn’t as big as their dogs, but what he lacked in size, he more than made up for in tenacity. His raggedy fur hid scars and marks from countless fights. He would be okay, and so would Woran. But telling herself this did not stop her heart pounding. The fire had nearly died, and the stew was almost cold.

They had been gone a long time.

When will they be back? Shall I go and look for them?

As she mulled it over, Sarah lit candles and the hurricane lantern to illuminate the house. She fed some more wood to the fire from the stack in the corner, to encourage a glow from the windows that she hoped would somehow deter any intruder. She could feel the lining of her gut twisting as she sat, waited and watched the door. She didn’t know where she was to go once she left here, and Woran had said he meant to come with her. If she got herself lost out there, missed Woran and Barra returning in the dark, what good would that do?

“Think with the heart more than the head and you will come to the Path that leads you out of a forest dark.”

It was something Woran had said to her a few times before, but it reminded her of Gorra and the White Rider.

Damn it, where was he?

Her heart was telling her to leave the house, with or without him. To go
now
. That twisting in her gut was screaming that something was out there. Something that should not be there.

Rap-rap-rap-rap

Sarah got to her feet and tried to peer around the window frame, but the firelight  had turned the world outside to shadow.

Rap-rap-rap-rap

Woran had taken his axe with him. A rolling pin lay on the table from when she had rolled out oat biscuits a few days ago. She picked it up and went to the door. She stopped.
What good was a rolling pin?

She moved her hand away from the bolt. She stepped away from the door.

A fierce rush of wind slammed the door open.

Sarah looked up at the tall figure that stood before her. There was nothing angular about him, and there was no sign of armour on his person. He wore a robe that had seen better days and he carried a staff of gnarled yet polished darkwood. As she opened the door, he removed the great cowl that covered his head and shadowed his face. The skin there was wrinkled, care-worn, tanned by the elements and the passage of time. His beard was long, ragged, and untrimmed, and the stark white of its hairs was contrasted by traceries of night black and stone grey. His one eye, though, was a piercing sapphire that shone like a jewel in the reflected light of the fire within. Where his other eye should have been there was only a pink, puckered hole.

“Am I addressing Sarah Bean, granddaughter to Woran Bean?”

“You are,” she said before she could think to hold her tongue. “Who are you?”

She made sure he could see she was armed, even if she felt slightly ridiculous holding a rolling pin as a weapon.

“You have seen yourself that the nights are growing longer, and the days themselves colder. It is wise to be wary of uninvited guests in such times.”

“You’re right about that. Now, who are you?”

“I am Ossen, a Wayfarer. You may have heard of me.”

Sarah shook her head, holding her ground so that he could not get a foot across the threshold.

“Ah, then you must not be from around here?”

Sarah tried to steady her face. She pressed her lips into a hard line in answer to the question. Ossen’s eye glittered and his next words broke her silence into pieces.

“Thou foot treads soft amidst thy darkening trees, O hear my call whisper on this twilight breeze. Does that sound familiar to you, Sarah Bean?”

The rolling pin clattered on the floor before she even realised she had dropped it. “You ... are you Gorra?”

“No. You flatter me, but no. I am not the Father of Leaves. But I have known him and he has spoken of you, Daughter of Flame.”

“He ... he called me O Flame. The Fellhound called me that too. What does it mean?”

“The Fellhound? Then He
has
found you already, not that it matters. Sarah, know that I mean you no harm, but I come with a message and a warning. Woran Bean is hurt in the woods to the north of here. Barra is with him and guarding him well, but the Fellhounds and those they serve will find them both soon enough.”

“Why did he leave without me?”

“He did not. He meant to return after buying travelling bags and two mules from an old friend—an old friend who betrayed him.”

“The Taproots.
Esiah!
”

“Yes. Woran slew him for his trouble, much to Esiah’s surprise. Go to him, Sarah. Find him and save him before the Fallen-born correct Esiah’s failure.”

“How can
I
save him alone?”

Outside, in the now shapeless darkness beyond Ossen, there came a howl. It was a long, high, forlorn sound that echoed in ways it should not have done, not in a valley.

“I did not say you would be alone, Sarah. Now go, quickly, before His Shadows find you.
Awake!
”

Chapter Eight

It was evening in the city of Highmount. Venna and her warden, Ianna, sat at the head of a long, time-cracked table carved from greybeard oak. A number of the thirteen men and women who sat on the council around the table were grey-bearded and grey-haired respectively. To be on the Highmount Council was an honour, but it was an office served until the grave claimed you, which led to the Council being made up of civil servants long past their political prime. It suited Ianna perfectly—the aged folk before her could be manipulated with a certain amount of ease. The customary murmurings settled into a hush around the table and the heavy red curtains were drawn across the Chamber’s high-vaulted windows in observance of symbolic tradition; nothing spoken or seen within the Chamber was to reach the ears and eyes of those outside.

Ianna rose to her feet and rested her palms upon the table, a dominant pose and one enhanced by her slender but muscled six-foot frame. Her hair was a cascade of black, framing her overly powdered white face with its thin lips and emerald eyes, which always seemed to be searching, probing, and assessing those around her. Her long fingernails glittered with minute inset emeralds. She cut a powerful figure beside the crowned queen.

Venna, at eleven, was small for her age. Her face was elfin and gentle, like her voice and manner, but her lower body was shrunken and stunted from a childhood bout of the Grey Touch—the same disease that took her mother’s life. Her legs hung wasted and useless from the chair. Venna ran her fine fingers over them often, as if the gesture would somehow revive and strengthen the atrophied muscles hidden beneath the gold-hemmed white silk. She was usually quiet in the Council meetings because she understood little of what was going on and cared for it even less. She missed Jedda, and she hated Ianna with a bile that would set the doddering old heads who whispered and
hurhm
ed around her dead father’s long table into shock. Her dreams at night, after Ianna was done with switching her, were always of running. Waking up and running far, far away over the Grassland Plains, hand in hand with Jedda.

Both of them together; laughing, happy, and free.

She knew it would never happen.

After clearing her asthmatic throat with a light bronchial cough, Venna spoke. “I call this meeting of the Council to order. My Lady and Warden to the Throne, Ianna Keldorn, will now speak on our business for the day.”