Chapter 12: Smoke and Ash
Crawling out of the well into the gray morning light, Hadrian entered into an alien world. Dahlgren was gone. Only patches of ash and some smoldering timber marked the missing homes, but even more startling was the absence of trees. The forest that had hugged the village was gone. In its place was a desolate plain, scorched black. Limbless, leafless poles stood at random, tall dark spikes pointing at the sky. Fed by smoldering piles, smoke hung in the air like a dull gray fog, hiding the sky behind a hazy cloud from which ash fell silently like dirty snow blanketing the land.
Pearl came out of the well. Not surprisingly, she said nothing as she wandered about the scorched world stooping to turn over a charred bit of wood then staring up at the sky as if surprised to find it still there now that the world had been cast upside down.
“How did this happen?” Russell Bothwick asked to no one in particular, and no one answered.
“Thrace!” Theron yelled as he emerged from the well, his eyes focusing on the smoking ruins atop the hill. Soon everyone was running up the slope.
Like the village, the castle was a burned out hull, the walls gone as were the smaller buildings. The great manor house was a charred pile. Bodies lay scattered, blackened by fire, torn and twisted. The corpses still smoked.
“Thrace!” Theron cried in desperation as he dug furiously into the pile of rubble that had been the manor house. All of the village men, including Royce, Hadrian, and even Magnus dug in the debris more out of sympathy than hope.
Magnus directed them to the southeast corner muttering something about the ‘earth speaking with a hollow voice.’ They cleared away walls and a fallen staircase and heard a faint sound below. They dug down revealing the remains of the old kitchen and the cellar beneath.
As if from the grave itself, they pulled forth Deacon Tomas, who looked battered but otherwise unharmed. Just as the villagers had, Tomas wiped his eyes, squinting in the morning light at the devastation around him.
“Deacon!” Theron shook the cleric. “Where is Thrace?”
Tomas looked at the farmer and tears welled in his eyes. “I couldn’t save her, Theron,” he said in a choked voice. “I tried, I tried so hard. You have to believe me, you must.”
“What happened, you old fool?”
“I tried. I tried. I was leading them to this cellar, but it caught us. I prayed. I prayed so hard, and I swear it listened! Then I heard it laugh. It actually laughed.” Tomas’ eyes filled with tears. “It ignored me and took them.”
“Took them?” Theron asked frantically. “What do you mean?”
“It spoke to me,” Tomas said. “It spoke with a voice like death, like pain. My legs wouldn’t hold me up anymore and I fell before it.”
“What did it say?” Royce asked.
The deacon paused to wipe his face leaving dark streaks of soot on his cheeks. “It didn’t make sense, perhaps in my fear I lost my mind.”
“What do you think it said?” Royce pressed.
“It spoke in the ancient speech of the church. I thought it said something about a weapon, a sword, something about trading it for the women. Said it would return tomorrow night for it. Then it flew away with Thrace and the princess. It doesn’t make any sense at all, I’m probably mad now.”
“The princess?” Hadrian asked.
“Yes, the princess Arista of Melengar. She was with us. I was trying to save them both—I was trying to—but—and now…” Tomas broke down crying again.
Royce exchanged looks with Hadrian and the two quickly moved away from the others to talk. Theron promptly followed.
“You two know something,” he accused. “You got in didn’t you. You took it. Royce got the sword, after all. That’s what it wants.”
Royce nodded.
“You have to give it back,” the farmer said.
“I don’t think giving it back will save your daughter,” Royce told him. “This thing, this Gilarabrywn, is a lot more cunning than we knew. It will—”
“Thrace hired you to bring me that sword,” Theron growled. “That was your job. Remember? You were supposed to steal it and give it to me, so hand it over.”
“Theron, listen—”
“Give it to me now!” the old farmer shouted as he towered menacingly over the thief.
Royce sighed and drew out the broken blade.
Theron took it with a puzzled look, turning the metal over in his hands. “Where’s the rest?”
“This is all I could find.”
“Then it will have to do,” the old man said firmly.
“Theron, I don’t think you can trust this creature. I think even if you hand this over it will still kill your daughter, the princess, and you.”
“It’s a risk I am willing to take!” he shouted at them. “You two don’t have to be here. You got the sword—you did your job. You’re done. You can leave any time you want. Go on, get out!”
“Theron,” Hadrian began, “we are not your enemy. Do you think either of us wants Thrace to die?”
Theron started to speak, then closed his mouth, swallowed, and took a breath. “No,” he sighed, “you’re right. I know that, it’s just…” he looked into Hadrian’s eyes with a look of horrible pain. “She’s all I’ve got left, and I won’t stand for anything that can get her killed. I’ll trade myself to the bloody monster if it will let her live.”
“I know that, Theron,” Hadrian said.
“I just don’t think it will honor the trade,” Royce said.
“We found another over here!” Dillon McDern shouted as he hauled the foppish scholar, Tobis Rentinual, out of the remains of the smokehouse. The skinny courtier, covered from head to foot in dirt, collapsed on the grass coughing and sputtering.
“The soil was soft in the cellar…” Tobis managed then sputtered and coughed. “we—dug into it with our—with our hands.”
“How many?” Dillon asked.
“Five,” Tobis replied, “a woodsman, a castle guard I think, Sir Erlic, and two others. The guard—” Tobis entered into a coughing fit for a minute than sat up, doubled over and spat on the grass.
“Arvid fetch water from the well!” Dillon ordered his son.
“The guard was badly burned,” Tobis continued. “Two young men dragged him to the smokehouse, saying it had a cellar. Everything around us was on fire except the smokehouse so the woodsman, Sir Erlic, and I all ran there too. The dirt floor was loose, so we started burrowing. Then something hit the shed and the whole thing came down on us. A beam caught my leg. I think it’s broken.”
The villagers excavated the collapsed shed. They pulled off a wall and dug into the wreckage, peeling back the fragments. They reached the bottom where they found the others buried alive.