They call a blade like that a seax in this part of the Banished Lands, his da had told him when they’d forged it together.
Drem didn’t care what it was called; he just knew that he loved it, that it felt a part of him, his permanent companion. The bone-antler hilt was worn to a perfect fit for Drem’s fist. He shared the meal between them and they sat eating in companionable silence. They were partway into foothills that led up to a range of snow-capped mountains at their back, but Drem was staring in the opposite direction, out over the landscape that unrolled below them. A great lake dominated the view, its waters dark and shimmering in the setting sun, about it a patchwork of tree and meadow that was tinged with red and gold as autumn slipped into winter. Between Drem and the lake the lights of a large town flickered into life, tiny as fireflies from this distance. A sturdy stockade wall ringed the town, dotted with torchlight. It was Kergard, the most northerly town of the Desolation, built by hard people to survive in a hard environment. Drem liked the look of it all, the colours merging, lights glowing soft and warm like candles. Other lights sputtered into existence beyond the stockade walls, homesteads scattered across the land. Drem’s eyes searched out their own home, a little to the north and nestled amongst the fringes of woodland, though he knew there would be no fires lit, no torches or candles burning at a window.
Home, if I can call anywhere that, when I’ve spent most of my life travelling from one place to the next. This will be our fifth winter in the same place, though, and that’s the longest I can remember staying anywhere since Mam . . .
He was looking forward to returning home after half a year of hunting and trapping in the Bonefells. He liked his life in the Wild with his da – loved it even – but his da was right: winter was almost upon them, and that was not the time to be sleeping on root and rock.
As he stared at the speckled landscape he saw a new cluster of lights appear, further north and east from his home, close to the northern bank of the lake.
‘That wasn’t there when we left,’ he said to his da, pointing.
‘No.’ Olin frowned. ‘Looks like Kergard’s grown. Hope they know what a winter this far north is like. The land won’t be green like this for much longer.’ His da looked from the panorama before them and then up and over his shoulder at the snow-capped mountains and darkening sky, watching his breath mist before him. ‘Winter’s following close behind us.’
‘Aye,’ Drem grunted, pulling his deerskin tighter. ‘Strange that this land is called the Desolation,’ he murmured, struggling with imagining the landscape before him as an uninhabited wasteland of rock and ash.
His da grunted, licking fat from his fingers.
‘And that lake was once a crater?’
‘Aye, it was,’ Olin said. ‘The Starstone Crater, where a rock fell from the sky. Started a lot of trouble, did that rock.’
Drem knew all about that, had listened to the tale-tellers speak of how the Starstone had crashed to earth, though he struggled to imagine such a thing happening. The tales told of Seven Treasures that had been forged from the Starstone, and that the first war had been fought over those Treasures, men and giants shedding a river of blood. It had taken a god to stop it; Elyon the Maker had unleashed his legions of Ben-Elim, raining a judgement of death and destruction upon the world and its inhabitants. Elyon had only stopped when he realized that he had been tricked, lured into the plan of his great enemy, Asroth, Demon-Lord of the Fallen. Elyon had walked away then, abandoning the world of flesh and banishing both his own Ben-Elim as well as Asroth and his Kadoshim hordes to the world of spirit, the Otherworld, where they remained trapped for two thousand years as men and giants slowly rebuilt their shattered world.
Until just over a hundred years ago, when the Kadoshim found a sorcerous way to break their bonds in the Otherworld. They returned to the Banished Lands in an explosion of hatred and slaughter, but the Ben-Elim followed them, their eternal war spilling into the world of flesh.
‘Much has changed since the coming of the Ben-Elim,’ Drem said.
‘Aye,’ Olin grunted. ‘And not much of it good.’
Drem’s da was not a supporter of the Ben-Elim. It was rare that he would even mention them, despite Drem’s attempts to lure him into that conversation.
‘Turning the Desolation into this is good, though,’ Drem said, waving a hand at the vista before them.
‘This is good,’ his da agreed, ‘but the Ben-Elim didn’t do this. They’ve done it,’ he said, pointing to the settlement beside the lake, ‘and others like them. People like us.’
‘We’re trappers, hunters.’
‘Aye, well, I mean people that have travelled north and settled here, irrigating, farming, planting, growing. The Desolation has become this because generations of people like us made it a better place. Though I suppose the Ben-Elim are the reason behind that as well, their protection in the south was what drove many here.’
Drem thought about that a while. Stars prickled into life in the crow-black of night as darkness seeped into the world around them.
‘They’ll come here, too, though, won’t they?’ Drem said into the night. ‘The Ben-Elim. Sooner or later, as they have elsewhere, to hunt the Kadoshim.’
He’d said that last word quickly, knowing his da did not like to hear it uttered.
Kadoshim. Dread demons of Asroth who had escaped their bonds in the Otherworld and entered Drem’s world to become creatures of flesh and blood, monsters come to destroy all that lived in these Banished Lands. His da hated them, hated the very sound of their name.
Because they killed my mam.
He didn’t like to upset his da, could hear his breathing was sharper, his frame tense, just from those few words, but if he could get him to talk of the Kadoshim, maybe he would then be able to talk of Drem’s mam, too . . .
‘Aye,’ Olin growled, spitting on the floor beside him. ‘The Ben-Elim will be here one day. But later rather than sooner, I hope. May they linger in Drassil another hundred years. And every day until then shall be better for their absence. I’ve searched many a year for a place where we can live free.’ He drew in a breath, seemed about to say something more, but only silence followed.
Drem breathed deep, the scent of pine trees and winter heavy in the air.
‘Have you seen Drassil?’ he asked, a new tactic.
Olin gave him a sidelong look.
‘I have, as you well know.’
Drem opened his mouth to ask another question.
‘Enough,’ his da snapped as he stood quickly. ‘A long day on the morrow, I’m for my bed.’ He stamped his feet, stood there hesitantly for a moment, looking down at Drem. Then he walked away and lay close to the fire. Drem heard the rustle of furs and popping of a cork as a skin of mead was unstoppered.