Dusk drew near as I approached the familiar bridge, the fifth since I had departed the Planter demesne. Autumnal light filtered through the shedding trees, orange as a dying candle flame. Leaves crunched under my iron-weighted boots, or played in wind-caught eddies around the hem of my red cloak. I rested my axe on my shoulder as I advanced, unbound. No need to hide it where I headed.

I paused at the entrance to the bridge, running my eyes over the ancient green stone. Moss and ivy covered nearly every inch of the structure, grown so dense in some places I could barely make out the engravings on the three high arches. I took a moment to rifle through the satchels tied to my belt, found what I needed, then waited a while.

My ears caught a sound beneath. Claws on stone. Then, fast and clever as an ape, a diminutive shape scurried up the arches, swung from one to leap several feet in the air, then land dexterously on all fours. Pale, glinting eyes shone down at me from a gnarled, ancient face set above a squat body. Short, bent legs with long claws grasped the mossy stone as a gnarled hand attached to an over-long arm came up to stroke a tuft of gray goatee. The creature was all gray and green, the same colors as the bridge, with a pot belly and horny growths sprouting from every limb.

I inclined my head respectfully. “Hezrobog.”

“You’re still alive.” The bridge troll muttered, sniffing contemptuously. “Figures.”

“Only barely,” I offered, then gestured to the bridge. “May I cross?”

“Depends,” Hezrobog said, propping his cheek on a fist nearly large as his round head. “Do you have the toll?”

My lips tightened into a thin line. “I live here, Hez.”

“That’s Hezrobog of the Fane Bridge to you, you half baked knight. And you don’t live here more than a month or three out of every year. You’re a free loader, you and the old man…” His deeply recessed eyes, nearly shining in the gloom, studied me critically. “You know the customs. Toll for crossing, or you can find your way through the forest.” He waved a hand toward the darkening woods.

I sighed, and began fishing around in my cloak. “You’re a stodgy old wart, Hezrobog.”

The troll clucked his tongue impatiently. I produced a closed fist and proffered it, opening my fingers to reveal a single mottled gray petal. “An Ash Rose, from the Tempering Hills in Oshelm.”

As if on cue, a gust of wind took the petal from my hand. Hezrobog caught it, sniffed suspiciously, then studied it with more interest. “I have not known this scent before,” he admitted. “It suffices. Cross.”

I moved across the bridge, feeling the ancient sentinel’s eyes on my back. The woodland path changed as I moved into the forest beyond the troll bridge. The sun finished its decline, and the greater moon rose full to cast the woods in shades of black and silver. My boots clipped over slabs of river stone placed in a meandering trail through the trees, and the music of a stream found my ears. Enormous webs linked many of the trees, the dew clinging to them catching the moonlight.

Witch-light guided me into the Fane. Some of it came from the elf-made structures, tall arches and meandering walkways circumnavigating a winding stream and those trees which grew along its path. Some of it came from blue lanterns hung here and there, or from wild wisps blinking through the woods. I crossed another bridge, smaller and lacking a sentry, and passed into…

Home, I suppose. At least for a brief time.

I crossed into the shrine proper as I passed beneath a tall arch. A fountain trickled in something like a village square. Its waters fed a narrow channel which emptied into several small pools, fed also by the stream. Under the rising moon, they seemed like little patches of molten silver. Quiet string music played through the space, soothing and subtly sad. A temple fashioned in amphitheater style lay beyond the pools, its interior lost in shadow. Not far off, a path ascended a gentle slope deeper into the woods.

I began to move toward that slope. I stopped when a voice cracked the night’s serenity.

“So, you’re still alive. And you decided to come crawling back.”

I still had my cloak’s pointed cowl up, which hopefully masked the grimace that flickered across my face. I turned, smoothing my expression into polite neutrality. “Oraeke. I didn’t think you’d be back from the south so soon.”

It isn’t often anyone is tall enough to glare down at me. I’m most of two meters tall, and I’m used to looming. The figure standing beneath the arches of the temple pushed seven feet, and had me beat in sheer brawn as well. She wore a loose garment of deep blue cloth laden with decoratives of brass and iron hung about a frame solid as mountain stone. Ceremonial armbands strained against biceps thick as my legs. A single calloused hand clutched a tall, broad-headed spear in a tight grip. Fiery red hair framed an angular face set with two bright, glaring eyes dark as obsidian, save for the tiny pricks of faerie light shining at their centers.

When I met that fell gaze, Oraeke bared teeth framed by wolfish canines, the lower jutting up long enough nearly to protrude from the lips even when closed.

Elves are not of singular form. Sure, people might think of them as lithe, graceful, eternally young sprites of the woodland, and many appear that way. It’s half glamour, at least half the time. The pointy eared youths we think of when we think elf make up only one of countless forms the Sidhe can take. In truth, many of the “monsters” men think of when they think of the ancients — goblins, trolls, dryads, satyrs, some varieties of vampire, and stranger things still — these are all close kindred, all Elden.

And, sometimes, an elf maid might be seven feet tall and built like a war chimera. Just because they’re called “The Fair Folk” doesn’t mean they conform to a single definition of fair.

“I thought for certain you’d died some ignominious death out there,” Oraeke said, studying me through slitted eyes.

I was too tired to spar with the elf. “Life’s full of little disappointments.” I turned my eyes forward and started walking again.

“It’s no matter for jest,” she said. Something about her tone made me pause and glance back. Oraeke had an odd expression. Her lips were pressed tight, her brow furrowed. Anger and concern warring for their place. She glanced up the hill. “He’s gotten worse since you left.”

I understood the expression then. Hurt. I drew in a breath and turned to face her more fully. “How bad is it?”

“You should see for yourself.” She closed her eyes, seeming to steady herself. More calmly she said, “this isn’t a good place for healing, Hewer. There are too many unquiet spirits.”

“I thought the shrine kept them away?” I looked past her to the marble temple.

Oraeke shrugged. “Physically, sure.” She pointed her bronze-headed spear to the woods. “But you can hear their voices every night. He’s sick in here,” she tapped a calloused finger against her skull, “and here,” she tapped at her breast. She shuffled a moment, frowning deeply. “He needs quiet.”

Nowhere was quiet, not for most of ten years. Leastways, not to those with the senses to hear the land’s disquietude. “Where would you have me take him, then?” I asked, not quite managing to keep the frustration from my tone.

Oraeke just shrugged her broad shoulders. “Dunno.” Then, the anger creeping back in she added, “you reek of blood. Best not trouble him long.”

With that, she turned and stalked into the depths of the temple. I stood awhile, feeling foolish with my magicked axe on my shoulder and my pointed red cowl up. What had I expected? That my return would be met with some sense of gravity, that I’d impress the other inhabitants of the Fane?

“Don’t mind her, lad. Guarding this place can be a taxing duty.”

I reached up with my free hand and pulled my hood back. “I didn’t plan to be away so long,” I said, hearing in my own voice how hollow the excuse sounded. I turned to give the same formal nod of greeting to the newcomer. For a giant, Caim could move very stealthily. “Forgemaster.”

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Caim returned my nod. Standing near three times as tall even as Oraeke and built like a castle turret, the smith seemed made all of sooty clay and pressed ash. His enormous hands were blackened up to the elbow, and mottled scars covered near every inch of his skin I could see. His clothes were not dissimilar from the elf maid’s — loose cloth in an archaic style, pinned at one shoulder. In his case I couldn’t tell the original color of the dye, so faded and forge-stained was it.

“That arm has tasted blood,” the smith said, kneeling down to squint a granite eye at my weapon. He ran his fingers through his thundercloud of a beard, giving me a glimpse of embers smoldering through it. “You have done fell work these past seasons.”

I rested the Faen Orgis — the Doomsman’s Arm — on both my hands. The gently curved haft of the axe had been fashioned from a single uncarved branch of oak, taken from a tree grown in a land lost to a long-ago age. The blade had been reforged and refitted more recently, alloyed from faerie bronze and mortal steel for my own use. Eddies of gold and silver had been worked into the intricate patterns adorning the bit, to better channel aura.

“It’s served me well,” I said to the giant, trying to sound grateful.

Caim snorted, the sound impossibly deep. “You hate the thing. It leaves a… scent, I suppose. Weapons have aura too, and it’s my Art to read them. To shape them, just as I blend the alloy.” He held out a palm big as a soldier’s shield. “I will sharpen its edge. I can do nothing for the scent — that is part of it.” He shrugged.

I gave him the axe. Caim had been the one to reforge it, so I felt no qualms about handing it over to his care. “Thank you, forgemaster.”

Caim held the weapon, hefty even in my hands, between his forefinger and thumb. He held it up to the moonlight. Reflected and enhanced by the enchanted pools, the night sky made the circle shine near bright as day.

He’d be lost in his craft from there. I left the old smith to his appraisal and made my way up the path that led through the woods above the temple grounds. As I walked, the glimmering spider webs in the trees grew more abundant, and the origin of the ghostly music nearer at hand.

For a place known to some as the Doomsman’s Circle, Oria’s Fane can be very peaceful. I knew that peace to be a facade, a veil of quietude pulled around the ancient sanctuary. The inhabitants — myself and the others who called that secluded place home — did dark work, and when you cloak yourself in enough blood and shadow, it tends to cling to you, like soot or oil. I can gain some measure of quiet in hallowed ground, but the dead are always hounding my steps. In part because of the fell weapon I carry, and in part because of the oaths I’ve broken. Devoid of their protection, my gold-alloyed soul draws in lost spirits like moths to a candle flame.

The grounds through which I walked had been the refuge for others given my role, and was home to more still who did similar work for the gods. For generations upon generations this had been the case, and the tread of all those bloody boots had left their stain. Hezrobog’s suggestion that I find another path had been no idle threat — the forests around the shrine were terribly haunted.

At the Fane, powerful enchantments had been woven to keep the restless dead and worse things at bay. The troll bridge at the outer boundary acted as only the first ward in that layered aegis. The spider webs were another, and Oraeke’s spear the vicious fang waiting behind the shield wall.

Even still, I could feel the anger pressing in on those unseen walls. It grew deeper as the night aged, denser, like the growing pressure as one sank underwater. Though I knew I was safe within the Fane’s grounds, safer than near anywhere else in all the world, still I felt it as I made my way toward the orange glow of a hearth flame burning within a humble home above the shrine.

It is worse for some. Worse for the one who dwelt in the little cottage at the top of the hill.

The last true Knight of the Alder Table.

***

I approached the cottage on the hill above the shrine. Light burned within, welcoming, but even still I didn’t rush. When I reached the door and held my hand to the latch, I paused nearly half a minute, collecting myself. I could hear a sound within. A blade scraping against wood, quiet and focused.

I opened the door and stepped inside. A humble, clean room lay within. The hearth crackled warmly, wisps playing in it. A few flitted out to greet me, zipping around my head, their voices like half-remembered dreams. Simple carpets covered the wooden floor, and hunting trophies decorated the walls. Antlers from kynedeer and other woodland chimera, mostly. A beautifully fashioned bow of elfhorn adorned one wall, and a scarred sword more regal still crowned the hearth. In contrast, the bed pressed against one wall was small and humble, little more than a cot like some mendicant might use.

At a desk, with his back to me, sat an old man. He hunched over a wooden carving, blade working clever-quick. As I shut the door, the old man held the carving up. Half done, I could still make out the ornately carved robes and high crown on a narrow face.

“You’re back,” the old man said. His voice rasped from dry lips. When the fire caught the edge of his face, the gold riddling an eye that had once been all green glinted with feverish intensity, ringed in bruised layers of shadow. He hadn’t been sleeping.

I decided not to comment on his astute observation. I doffed my cloak and hung it by the door. My eyes caught on the glint of gilded steel on the bed. The pieces of a beautiful set of armor had been strewn haphazardly across it, including a helm set with elfhorn, its angles enwrapped in vines wrought from gold. The metal was shadow green, every inch of it etched with flowing script, a single pauldron sporting the ascending figure of an androgynous angel with wings outstretched. Worlds prettier than my black chainmail, which I also started to strip out of.

At the clinking of iron links, the old man frowned and turned more fully in his chair. His skin was a map of wrinkles, once well tanned but now ashen from lack of sun. His long hair had gone all to gray in the last few years, time catching up to him. I still remembered when it had been vibrant auburn, when his face had not been so withered. He looked sunken in on himself, the eyes deeply recessed, the bones stark against papery skin.

He had more scars since I’d last seen him, too. On his arms, and on his face. Nail marks. When I saw his fingers, the nails were torn nearly down to their roots.

Oraeke had said he’d gotten worse, but I hadn’t expected the evidence to be so visible.

“You have new armor,” he said. He sniffed, as though he could scent the metal from across the room. “That’s dark elf make.”

“A gift from an oradyn,” I said, as I took a blanket tossed against one wall to use as a satchel for the armor.

The old man grunted, then turned back to his carving. He took up the blade and the sound of steel scraping against wood once again filled the room. “We shouldn’t clad ourselves in black. It’s not right, not right at all. That’s not who we are, Ser Alken.”

I shrugged, finished removing my gear so I only wore my worn shirt and leggings, then walked to the small bed. I studied the masterwork armor thrown carelessly across it. “I thought this had been locked away in the shrine, for safekeeping.” I glanced at the weapon above the hearth. “Your sword, too.”

Impatience crept into the old man’s voice. “What good would it do locked away by the elves? It’s mine, I earned it, swore to wear it all the rest of my days.”

He stole it back, I realized, feeling something in my chest tighten. “Maxim—”

The knight’s expression hardened. “Ser Maxim, Lord Alken. Just because we live in exile among these faeries doesn’t mean we must forget proper form. Our mien during benighted times shows our true worth, you mustn’t forget that.”

“We’re safe here,” I told him, resisting the urge to remind him he was no longer my captain, and that neither of us were proper knights anymore. “You’re safe. This place is guarded, and Oraeke and the others don’t mean us any harm.”

“If you think that,” Maxim hissed, “then you are a fool. They keep me here to watch me. They think I’ll go mad, like Alicia and the rest.”

I moved to the edge of the table. He ignored me, hacking violently at the carving, mutilating the half-finished king he’d been coaxing from the block. With mild horror, I realized the kingly effigy had been carved with a sword in its heart. Maxim’s golden eyes shone in the dim light, just as I knew mine did.

“When did you last sleep, Sir?” I asked quietly, not wanting to sound accusing.

“Can’t sleep,” the knight rasped, a hint of despair creeping through the anger. “The dreams don’t relent.”

I ran a thumb along the ring on my right hand. Set on my forefinger, the ivory band clasped a shard of fomorisite, a stone resembling black glass. It was cold to the touch, with eddies of red swirling deep within the black, like rivulets of blood. It still had a few nights left in it, before it needed cleansing.

I slipped it off and proffered it. “You need to rest, Sir.”

Maxim’s eyes flickered to the ring. He swallowed, setting his tools down. He hesitated a moment, then snatched it. “Fine,” he said, screwing it onto his own gnarled knuckle. “Need to keep my strength up. Never know when the call will come.”

I can last one night without it, I told myself. The Fane was safe, my dreams wouldn’t be intruded on. Even still, it was a struggle not to close my fingers around the talisman and pull it back.

Maxim glanced at me, a hint of shame creeping into his atrophied features. “You’ve been gone a long time.” He nodded and started to stand. “There’s still some stew left in the pot. I’ll get you a bowl.”

I resisted the urge to help him stand. It would have been one of the more cutting offenses I could have given to any knight, and especially to a man who’d been Alder. He struggled, failed twice to stand, then hefted himself, grabbing a gnarled cane off the wall. He began to limp toward the hearth. He’d become very frail, his woolen shirt hanging limp over near skeletal shoulders. I could see more scabbed wounds peeking like creeping vines above the collar of his shirt. Had he been scourging himself, again? One of my hands tightened into a fist. I’d asked the shrine’s keepers to watch him for that.

He’d been among the older knights, when I’d joined the Table. After its breaking, the long years of health the elven magic had given him had begun to take their due. How old was he? A century? More?

“Could use more water to boil,” Maxim said, lifting the pot. “I’ll get more vegetables from the garden.”

I nodded, glad of the opportunity to get some fresh air. Five minutes in that cottage, and I felt desperate to escape again. “I’ll go down to the stream.”