Sam Bowring - Prophecy's Ruin

‘It’s a start,’ said Fahren.

‘I’ll have birds sent presently. As for now, my officers await. We’ll speak again soon.’

Fahren watched the entourage head off down the path. Naphur would do what Fahren asked, but Fahren doubted he grasped its significance. Naphur was a soldier at heart, and would fight this in his own way, even if that was exactly what the enemy wanted.

Today Fahren would be sending out birds of his own.

Each breath he took was another painful cobblestone on the slow road to consciousness. Dimly he began to smell wet wood and bracken, hear birds in the trees, feel a throbbing at the base of his skull …and then, rudely, he was awake. He opened his eyes with a moan.

A couple of handspans above him was what looked like the rippled bark of a tree trunk. How could it exist at such an angle, given he was lying down? He felt groggy and disoriented. Where was he? He shifted his weight and felt planks beneath him – the floor of his hut, but covered in splinters and branches. Everything was creaking. The tree trunk above him was stuck through his hut like a spear through a pig. The events of the previous night rushed back to him like scenes from a nightmare.

His boy!

His pain forgotten, Corlas rose from under the tree and stared about his broken home. Against the wall the cot lay in pieces, but there was no sign of his son. Bellowing angrily, he ran out into the clearing.

Sunlight shone merrily on ruination. The grass and earth were churned to sodden clumps. A gaping crack rent the ground. Trees around the clearing were burnt, broken or missing. Wood was everywhere, from tiny chips to massive branches. As Corlas took in the wreckage, the breeze brought him the stink of death. Fearing to find his son, he searched. The only body he found was the blade from the Halls, Dakur. Corlas left the corpse in the trees and returned to the clearing, a grief beyond madness shining in his eyes.

He fell to his knees on the destroyed flowerbed that housed his wife’s grave, plunging his fingers into the mud. This time yesterday his wife had been alive, giving birth to a child they both already loved, in the home they’d built together. Today he could not recognise where she was buried, their home was destroyed and his son was gone. Corlas did not even know who had taken him.

A seizing, choking pain gripped his chest, and he hoped that it would crush his heart and he would die.

When he came back to himself, he was standing in the trees with his axe in his hand. He didn’t remember getting it, but there it was. He glanced around – the clearing was behind him, as if he’d been walking away from it. Certainly he could not go back there yet, if ever. He stumbled away into the trees, and eventually fell, and slept where he landed. Sunlight began to burn his back, but above him the branches seemed to move closer together and blot it out. A soldier and mage passed him nearby, and grass grew around him to shield him from their searching gazes.

When Corlas awoke it was night. He broke free of the grass easily, without really wondering where it had come from, and hauled himself up against a tree trunk. He stared at the sky and thought not much of anything. Eventually he slept again, and dreamed torturous dreams of his wife that made him howl on awakening.

The next day, a baby deer walked out of the trees and simply lay down in front of him. Corlas knew he must force himself to eat, for it would be an insult not to. A small part of him was comforted that the wood still looked after him despite the loss of his Sprite wife. As he built a fire and spit, the rumbling in his stomach made him remember he was still alive.

The deer had begun to smoke when suddenly he heard voices carrying through the trees. He froze – who had come? Moving swiftly and quietly for such a large man, he stole towards the clearing, going low to the ground behind a log. Beyond, outside his hut, a troop of blades was working back and forth over the ground with rakes. Anger rose hot in him and his fingers itched on his axe. When would the violation end?

‘Spread out!’ yelled the penulm, the second in command. ‘The High Mage said it landed outside the clearing! You,’ she singled out a droopy-nosed fellow and pointed to where Corlas lay watching, ‘get over there!’

Corlas crawled backwards and slipped into the shadows at the base of a tree. The droopy-nosed fellow appeared where Corlas had been moments before and started raking the undergrowth unenthusiastically.

‘Three years of service,’ Corlas heard him mutter. ‘Would a bit of excitement be too much to ask? Yes, apparently. What’s your next assignment, Gudgeon, they ask. Well, it’s raking through leaves for bits of old jewellery! Pretty impressive, hey ladies? ’ The blade spat and leaned on his rake. ‘You would think,’ he went on, ‘that with Fenvarrow looming on the doorstep, I’d finally get to see some action. You would think!’ He slammed his rake back into the ground, digging into roots.

Corlas caught a growl before it made it past his lips. How dare this man treat the forest with such disrespect.

Gudgeon paused, then raised his nose into the air, giving a long sniff. Corlas wondered what he was doing, but then he too smelled it – off a way into the trees, his deer was cooking well.

‘Now there’s a thing,’ said Gudgeon, narrowing his eyes. ‘Smells like someone’s stolen off for a snack when they should be working.’ He put the rake against a tree. ‘Damned if the price of my silence ain’t going to be a tasty leg or two.’

The blade moved off into the trees, following his nose.

They even want to steal my lunch , thought Corlas, and almost found it funny.

Gudgeon became irritated that the illegal picnic wasn’t closer. There was something sinister about Whisperwood and he quickly discovered that he didn’t like being alone in it. People told stories about the place; stories that hadn’t seemed so worrying when he’d been working alongside a full troop of soldiers in a sunny clearing. It was said you could hear the whispers of the dead flying about the trees at night, and the streams in the north were full of fisherman’s banes.

‘Gudgeon, you fool,’ he muttered to himself, ‘you’re inventing fancies. There’s nothing out here but birdsong.’

The scent became stronger and he heard the crackle of flames and melting fat from around a tree. ‘Ah ha!’ he exclaimed, leaping out to surprise his soon-to-be-co-conspirators, then glanced around in confusion. Before him was a badly angled spit holding a deer above a fire, but there were no other blades in sight.

Something hit him in the back of his head and he blacked out.

A splash of cold water woke him, and he choked on the gag in his mouth. Attempting to raise his hands, he found them tied behind his back. Before him crouched a massive man, staring from under heavy brows and unkempt lengths of ratty hair that might once have been curly. His rippling torso was bare and covered with scratches and scars, and he wore only a pair of frayed trousers. In his hands he held a great axe, and the smear of blood on its blunt end told Gudgeon what had hit him.

‘You are forgiven for trying to cry out when you woke,’ growled the man, ‘but will not be again. Understand?’

Gudgeon nodded an affirmative, and the man pulled the gag out of his mouth.

‘Who are you?’ Gudgeon asked shakily, his head pounding.

For some reason this seemed to amuse the man, for a flash of teeth showed through the tattered beard. ‘Who am I?’ he repeated. ‘I used to live in the clearing that your comrades now search. I had a home and a wife there. My name is Corlas. Of the bloodline Corinas.’