Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

Arc 5: Chapter 3: Long Shadows

The rain let up as Emma and I approached the gates of the Fulgurkeep. Despite that, thunder rumbled in the dark clouds swirling high above the citadel. There always seemed to be thunder above the mighty fortress of House Forger. Perhaps that is how it got its name.

Standing sentinel over the dark waters of the Riven Sea on a craggy island, the Emperor’s palace consisted of multiple interconnected castles and a copious number of jutting towers and winding curtain walls. It rose high over the lashing waters of the bay, a brooding crown of solid stone and black volcanic rock, with knights and gargoyles standing sentry at every parapet.

Three bridges connected the Fulgurkeep to different sections of the city, the sprawl of the capital blooming from its stem like a great flower. After I’d arrived in the city and reconnected with Rosanna, I had tended to use the westernmost gate connected to her personal bastion, consisting of its own castle complex within the Fulgurkeep’s whole.

No longer. Now I used the main bridge, approaching openly and announcing myself to the sentries by name. I didn’t dress in inconspicuous garb any longer, but in my blood red cloak and black chain mail, my elven axe visible at my hip where I kept it secured through an iron ring.

The guards watched me warily as the gate swung open and I stepped through. My reputation, the dramatic display I’d made in the court weeks before, and the fact I’d single handedly slain a cathedral full of priorguard here in this very city had made many nervous around me.

It wasn’t an atmosphere I enjoyed, though it had its uses. And I’d made this choice.

“You’re not going to appear before the court looking like that, are you?” Emma followed close at my heel, trying to keep up with my longer strides without looking like she tried. “You’ve still got blood and, uh… sewage on you.”

“My cloak will cover most of it,” I muttered back. “Besides, they should see there’s work that needs doing, and not all of it is clean.”

“The Emperor won’t be pleased,” Emma warned in a low voice.

We had to step aside as a group of mounted nobles crossed the bridge. They were brightly dressed and bearing arms, and rode handsome steeds much closer to the classic horse than the guard cockatrices. They tossed us dubious looks as they passed, which I ignored and Emma returned with a stubborn lift of her chin.

One of the nobles detached from the group, pulling up beside us on a roan beast with owlish ear tufts and a fox tail, its hooves shoed in brassy steel. The man astride it had dark yellow hair and a refined goatee.

Recognizing him, I nodded a greeting. “Ser Tegan.”

Tegan Barker inclined his head, giving an even deeper bow to my squire. She sniffed at his gallantry, but didn’t comment.

“Master Alken! I hear I’ll be calling you Ser Alken before long. Perhaps even Lord.”

I adjusted my cloak, torn between the urge to shrug and shuffle. “That isn’t set in stone yet.”

Ser Tegan made a dismissive gesture. “Everyone expects it. But I’ve had a stomach full of politics today. You off to see His Grace?”

I lifted an eyebrow. “Which one?”

Tegan let out a sharp, pitched laugh. “Hah! Very good. Our blessed emperor is in court now, along with the Judge and some other big heads.”

He shifted his mount closer with a deft pull of the reigns, lowering his voice so those sentries nearby couldn’t hear. “Some of the talk has been about that Greengood girl’s trial. Have you given any thought to what I mentioned last we spoke?”

I pitched my voice low as his and kept any emotion from it. “I told you then, Tegan. It’s a bad idea. It won’t help her.”

Tegan shook his head, exasperated. “It’ll help her if it means we win. There are some right tough bastards who took the Grand Prior’s side. We have me, that Cymrinorean, and the Ironleaf. With you, our victory would be practically a foregone conclusion.”

Despite the damage done to the Priory, not least of which included their reputation, they had insisted on upholding the accusation levied by the late Grand Prior against the lady Laessa, accusing her of witchcraft and holding her on suspicion of being involved in the Carmine Killings. Her fate would be decided in a trial of arms on the first day of the upcoming tournament.

Tegan and some others seemed to think it a good idea for me to participate. I disagreed.

“It’s not just about winning a bout in the Coloss, Tegan.” I shook my head tiredly, having already had this argument. “If I throw in with you publicly, it’ll tarnish the girl’s reputation further. My position here is already tentative.”

Ignoring all personal grievances, that was exactly why Rose and I had to distance from one another. I was a black sheep, a renegade who’d bullied his way back into the peerage. No amount of divine intervention changed the politics of the matter.

Little more than a month and I’m already goring sick of politics, I silently grumbled.

Tegan huffed, straightening on his saddle. “Well, we’ve got a bit of time. Think on it. We could use you, Hewer.”

He gave Emma another nod, then spurred his beast on after the party he’d ridden out with. Emma watched him go with a hawkish intensity I’d learned to recognize as a dangerous sign.

“We should have steeds,” she said as we started walking again.

“I spend all my time in the city anyway,” I replied. “And I’ve told you why I don’t do mounts.”

I walked some haunted roads, and even in the depths of a metropolis like Garihelm, the risk of any beast I kept at hand getting possessed, driven insane, or butchered horribly was too great. My powers came with a number of costs, including a tendency to draw disquiet spirits and other ghastly attention. I’d had terrible things happen to animals often enough over the years that I’d decided to just keep to marching.

My squire said nothing for a while. Then in a low, serious tone she said, “It is demeaning. Having to trudge through the mud while the rest of the nobility ride about.”

“Neither of us are noble anymore,” I replied without looking at her. “If your feet are sore, then rest after court.”

Emma quickened her pace to walk beside me. “You’re not a vagabond anymore,” she said in a hard voice. “Alken, appearances matter now. People are watching us. They are seeing you trudge into the palace on foot covered in grime, held up by guards and forced to make way when riders pass. You are being sent on rat hunts in the sewers because the Emperor doesn’t know what else to do with you.”

Wary of listening ears as we passed beneath the bridge’s third arch, I replied in a low voice. “The Emperor can’t risk using me as the Choir does. If he does, the rest of the Accord will call him a tyrant. He’s acting with due caution.”

“He is a tyrant,” Emma hissed. “All kings are, if they want to keep their crowns. Markham Forger was raised by the realms to this position because he won a war. He is a warlord.”

Though I didn’t see the girl’s angry amber eyes, I felt them as she finished her speech. “He isn’t using you because he fearsthe consequences. And playing the errand boy is making you look weak.”

“Then what you would have me do?” I demanded, annoyed and trying to bury the pang of worry her words stirred.

We reached the second gate, and Emma fell back a step. She said one last thing before we got too close to the guards.

“You should be casting a long shadow everywhere you walk. Start acting like the Headsman.”

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The time for private arguments with my squire soon passed. We were ushered into the audience chamber, a circular room with high windows where a large number of nobles and other officials had already gathered.

“You’re late,” Cairbre muttered sullenly as I moved around the outer ring of dignitaries waiting on the Emperor’s pleasure. The thin man followed with quick steps, his hooked nose wrinkling. “And you stink.”

I barely threw him a glance, busy navigating the ring of courtiers encircling the enormous chamber. “I had a difficult day.”

“I hope you don’t expect me to announce you,” Cairbre complained.

Cairbre was the court herald, or one of them at least. It’s a prestigious position in many courts, and a trying one. You need to know the names and coat of arms of every House, lord, knight, distinguished adventurer, and general person of note across the breadth of the Accorded Realms on sight, and be able to announce them with aplomb.

The stick thin man was getting on in years, had a nervous disposition, and a habit of stuttering and coughing that made him seem apologetic where he needed gravitas. He had thinning gray hair he’d grown to his neck, a fine doublet a bit too large for him, and wooden shoes which clicked annoyingly with every step.

I’d also caught him racking up gambling debts in the city. Ever since, he’d been feeding me information about the court to avoid scandal. Not that I’d actually out him and risk another enemy, but he didn’t need to know that.

“What’s the word?” I asked him, slowing my pace and peering into the center of the chamber. A group gathered there, addressing the throne.

“Messengers from the south,” Cairbre said, fidgeting as he hovered around my shoulders. He nearly bumped into Emma, muttered an apology to her, then coughed and continued when I tossed him an impatient look. “Apparently they’re, uh, dispossessed nobles from Verdanhigh. They are petitioning His Grace to provide funds and manpower to, erm, resettle.”

I paused, taking a closer look at the group. They were all aristos, clad in fur coats and rich robes, most of them old and thin despite their open displays of wealth.

Noble born refugees, I realized. Verdanhigh had once been a proud realm bordering Seydis, the Blessed Country where Elfhome had been located. It had been left as little more than scorched earth, forsaken since the end of the war.

“How’s the court taking it?” I asked.

Cairbre swallowed, the prominent bump in his throat bobbing. “With very, um, eloquent disinterest.”

I scoffed. “Figures.”

The leading member of the delegation, a bent old man with an ornate cane, stood proud as an aged oak before the tiered dais where the imperial thrones rose above the assembly. His fur lined coat was long enough to drag along the ground behind him, and his voice had a tremor, but it filled the chamber with a stoic volume made more potent by his years rather than less.

I shivered. Aura. Many greater nobles, especially the leaders of the Houses, had a strong presence in the world. Much of that is to do with being the center of events that move the world. It sometimes gave them preternatural charisma.

I only caught the tail end of what the old man said. He started to continue, but a voice of fire forged iron and granite spoke over him, filling the chamber like a rumble of low thunder.

The Emperor had a mighty soul too, and this fortress was the edifice of his authority. The very stone echoed with his words.

“I understand your loss, Lord Desmond, and this court grieves for it.” Markham Forger, King of Reynwell and Emperor of the Accorded Realms of Urn, sat straight and dour on his throne of iron and gray rock.

As usual in his position as Knight of the Faith and the general who’d beaten the Recusant Lords, he wore a long coat of chain mail laden with medals. A gauntlet of filligreed gold encased his right arm from fingertip to shoulder. I knew it hid missing fingers, that gilded hand. He wasn’t a tall man, or a handsome one, but bore our world on his back.

Eight years now since the war’s end, and it hadn’t broken yet.

Lord Desmond leaned on his cane, his eyes fixed on the throne. My eyes wandered to the right of the Emperor, where the Empress’s throne lay just a tier lower than his.

Empty. I frowned at that. Where are you, Rose?

My attention returned to the Verdanhigh nobleman as he addressed the leader of the realms. “Understanding this loss and compensating for it are not the same, Your Grace. My people are outcasts, living off the charity of the Accord. All I ask is that we be given the resources needed to recover our homeland, so that we may provide for this confederation as equals.”

By this point, I’d reached a position in the ring of courtiers relatively close to the dais. Most moved for me, either because of my looming height or perhaps my odor. I didn’t care either way. Cairbre had shuffled off somewhere when I’d stopped asking questions, and only Emma shadowed me.

I moved in to occupy the empty space around a tall figure clad in the brown robes of a monk. I muttered a greeting to the elf. Oradyn Fen Harus winked a deep blue eye at me before returning his attention to the scene at the court’s center. Emma kept back a ways in the outer ring of lesser officials and servants waiting on the pleasure of the lords. Listening to their whispers as much as watching my back, I knew.

“You wish to benefit the Accord as equals,” a deeply basso voice rumbled with pipe organ tones. The Lord Steward, looming taller than any man in the court at the Emperor’s right hand, leaned forward like some union between cherub and giant. “Yet, Lord Desmond, you would place yourself far more deeply in our debt were we to indulge this request.”

“Indulge?” Lord Desmond asked, his aged voice taking on an edge.

From below the throne, another figure cleared his throat. Oswald Pardoner, who was sometimes called Lord of Judges and spoke for the Bairn Cities, took a step forward to address the patriarch. Gaunt and normally sepulchral in his mannerisms and dark garments, he used a soothing, diplomatic voice now.

“Much of our land was left wounded by the war, my lord.” Oswald clasped his long fingers together, his voice and expression not unsympathetic. “There are once fertile countrysides left to be reclaimed by the wilderness. Entire demesnes have been left without leadership. Prosperous new land could be claimed for your people, abandoned castles and manors restored for your knights. Reclaiming Verdanhigh from the woed beasts and other threats now occupying it could not be done without cost, and resettling such injured territory could be the work of generations.”

The Pardoner lord spread his hands out, the sleeves of his black robes of state unfolding like crow wings. I saw Desmond’s gnarled hands tighten on the head of his cane, tendons standing out. The only sign of his growing tension.

“Verdanhigh is our home,” Desmond said in a strained voice. “Our people have worked that soil since the first days of Urn’s settling by our nations.” He placed a hand to his breast. “My House was tasked by God Herself to govern that land. It was blessed by Her own feet, its wheat made golden by Her own hand. The Heir of Heaven gave us this sacred duty.”

Many in the court stirred with this show of piety. My attention remained on the growing sense of frustration and anger in the old man, and something else. He seemed familiar, but I couldn’t place why.

Desmond’s voice took on an edge of grating steel. “I will not abandon my charge to become some minor provincial vassal, left to oversee the tilling of fields that will not even feed mine own people. You would make slaves of us.”

The Steward’s face darkened. “That is a serious accusation, Lord Desmond.”

The old nobleman did not quaver or back down, as many did beneath the threatening baritones of the towering Steward. His attention remained fixed on the Emperor, his bright blue eyes clear as cerulean crystal despite his age.

Markham Forger settled back into his throne. He didn’t do anything so telling as sigh, though his voice came softer than it might have. “I would not do such a thing to your House, not after all it has already suffered. However, all the land still bleeds from the war. New prosperity has been brought from our trade with the west, true, but it will take time for much of that to bear fruit. Even still…”

Markham’s eyes went to Oswald’s, who nodded. The Emperor’s voice lifted, and I knew he addressed the whole court then.

“In these trying times, we must pull together. The downfall of one great House is a tragedy, one we should neither dismiss nor allow through idleness. Therefore, I have decided to offer Lord Desmond a seat on the Ardent Round.”

Fen Harus shuffled at my side, his cloven hooves striking the stone floor with audible clicks. “A bold move,” the elf said in his soft, musical voice. With a four fingered hand, he stroked at the tufts of white hair falling from beneath his elongated chin. “That will have repercussions.”

Desmond looked stricken. He opened his mouth to speak, coughed, then adjusted his grip on his cane. “That is a… but my House, and those it represents, have nothing to offer the Accord at this time. To give me a seat on its highest council…”

He trailed off as Markham nodded. “You have wisdom,” the Emperor said, “and you are a high lord of Urn regardless of your circumstances. Your House bears blood from Edaea, and that should not be dismissed. Will you accept?”

Not all the faces in that court looked pleased, I noted. In particular, the Princess of Graill, Snoë Farram, had an expression not dissimilar to an angry thundercloud.

“I accept,” Lord Desmond said after regaining his composure. “I will endeavor to prove worthy of the honor, Your Grace.”

“I have no doubt,” the Emperor said without irony.

Fen Harus lamented quietly at my side. “This will earn them enemies. They have already suffered much, and few will see what good they might accomplish through the shadow cast over their line. Ah, poor House Wake! I fear they languish under a terrible curse.”

I startled, looking first at the elf and then at the delegation of haunted eyed nobles, in their threadbare vestments and tarnished finery. “Wait… that’s House Wake? That’s Desmond Wake?”

I should have realized, but I’d thought the clan destroyed or gone into hiding. I had known there were surviving highborn from Verdanhigh, but I hadn’t thought the most famous — no, the most infamous — of them would make such a public appearance.

“That’s right,” Fen Harus said sadly. “They are still trying to make up for the treachery of their greatest daughter.”

I let out a long breath, images of fire and horror playing behind my eyes. An immortal king, made not so immortal by the swords driven into his back, caped and armored figures encircling him.

That was why the old man looked so familiar. I could see it in the lines of his face, the way he carried himself, hear it in the way he spoke. Desmond resembled her, his aunt, though she hadn’t looked a day over forty when I’d last seen her thanks to the Alder’s blessings.

The High Captain of the Knights of the Alder Table. My high captain, greatest of the paladins of Seydis, and the worst traitor in Urn’s history save for only one. Her name escaped my lips without me meaning to say it, as though dragged forth by a hook.

“Alicia.”