II. I HEARD THAT YOU DIED

  Aichlan awoke from his fugue, as one who spent too many hours in too many cups, coming to his senses in an all too unfamiliar wood. The old, towering trees threatened to envelop him, like dissenting old croons to some young interloper. He could tell neither the time of day nor how he had come to be in this place, limping along the mossy stones as his life’s blood left a small stream in his wake.

  An ironic chuckle escaped his lips, startling himself in his delirium, he whipped about to see who had made the sound. The suddenness of motion caused what blood was left in his head to drain further, and he felt the black void creeping upon him once more. Twirling as if to do a drunken pirouette, Aichlan collapsed upon the trunk of a twisted beech. He retched, though his eviscerated stomach had nothing more to give. There he lay panting, lapsing in and out of consciousness for either several minutes or several hours, the darkened wood gave nothing with regards to the march of time; not that his stupor would allow for comprehension if such clues were given.

  When his senses once more prevailed, and the absurdity of his sudden change in location was pushed to the back of his mind, he was able to fully comprehend how fucked his situation truly was. The path he had been following, or had thought he had been following, was long gone. His resting place was among the ferns and underbrush. He swore and wiped his bloody face off on an equally bloody sleeve. Despite his current state, everything in his being told him that he had just been on a rocky path with no turns to speak of. Yet then again, he had just been dead or dying on a tiled floor well and far away from any wood sometime earlier. Who was to say what was what anymore?

  Where am I? Didn’t I die at the fort? Hadn’t that been the point of my being stationed there? Wasn’t that the plan of those bastards in the service of…?

  An intense pain suddenly wracked his entire being. A beast howled in the distance. Aichlan’s vision became white, and as the world slowly came back into focus, he was standing with the realization that the howling beast was himself. Bones were clearly broken; he could see one poking out through his shin. He made a hasty tourniquet/compression bandage of his trouser leg and fashioned a splint of nearby sturdy branches. Using his sword as a crutch, he pushed further into the wood. He had questions but could find no answers if he remained to die ignominious; slumped against a tree in some nameless wood.

  Aichlan descended into a shallow valley, becoming swallowed up in a thick veil of fog as his body screamed in agony. Periodically he would stop to procure a fresh twig to place between his teeth, a futile effort to prevent himself from biting off his own tongue as each step threatened unconsciousness or the welcome embrace of death. As he reached the bottom of the valley, he began his ascent upon his belly like a worm, clawing his way up with one good hand and a decent foot, clenching his sword in his teeth by the frog; his belt having been fashioned into a makeshift sling.

  The legends of old, those tales of creation that comprise The Book of the Dawn, told of humanities tainted souls and an endless field of clouds bathed in perpetual rays of the morning sun. A land of joy where a race of children danced with cherubic splendor singing the suns glory. As Aichlan crawled up from the fog bank and opened his eyes to the sun cresting the horizon, the thought flashed through his mind that he had obtained his salvation: he had cleansed the taint from his soul at last. But the moment was short lived, as a wave of nausea washed over him along with shooting pain from every limb.

  He spent several moments vomiting blood and gasping for breath under that radiant dawn. The trees had cleared around the small rise he had surmounted, which gave him the best chance he was going to get to gain his bearings. No sooner he had sat up, then he heard the low growl of a wolf to his left. Wondering when the gods would see fit to end their cruel japes at his expense, he rolled over to face his now certain fate. It was a gaunt bitch with a gaudy, mangy, pelt. Even were she to make a meal of him, it was not likely she would live long enough to shit him out. The thought of how futile it all was caused Aichlan to laugh aloud, despite waves of pain that rode each chuckle. To his surprise, for what felt like an eternity, she did not move to sink her fangs into his throat, only stood and growled in a menacing way. Ever arrogant, a piece of his mind attributed the beast's delay to cowardice, and he felt his chest swell with newfound vigor, if only slightly so. Aichlan inched his way further up the rise to gain steadier footing, only for the she-wolf to snap at him with foamy maw, dashing any foolhardy plans he may have been formulating.

  Seeing no way forward, and his would-be assailant erring on the side of caution, he pushed himself back, half climbing, half sliding back down to the mist filled valley below. The rabid bitch did not follow, likely mad with thirst and hours from death's door herself, she stood sentry upon the rise.

  Among the detritus of the forest floor, once more, he resigned himself to death. He focused on old half remembered hymns and tales of the glory that awaited in Elysium but found no comfort in them. Not that he felt he had sufficiently “purified” himself to gain entry anyway. Aichlan had not even joined The Knights of The Order of his own volition, thrust there to escape his father’s shadow, with only the skills of a squire and the fame of his parentage to get him out of Aes Sidhe to craft his own fate. It was by said parentage and his skill with a blade that he obtained its highest office of Grand master. That and favor of the Priestess Renata.

  As he bled to death in the nameless wood, the very idea of salvation and afterlife struck him as preposterous. If his spirit were to live on after his body became mulch, it was his sincerest hope that it made its way home under the mounds where his mother was birthed, or to become the lights on lakes and bogs in the north where he spent his youth learning his trade. The land of the fey, what his people dubbed Magh Meall. With as much concentration as could be mustered, Aichlan willed himself to move, but found his limbs unresponsive. He could feel nothing, especially not the pain that should wrack his battered body and cripple any cognition.

  The distant sound of rushing water broke him from his thoughts. The fog slowly parted to reveal the gentle stream he lay upon, wide and shallow yet flowing purposefully onward. A woman walked towards him, seeming to materialize from the very mist. Her clothes were of the ruling class of Elysia, a stola and palla of brilliant white with accents of gold and robin’s egg blue. A lady of The Order of Dawn, his lady. He reached out weakly to touch her, though his arms were unresponsive. After several attempts, he finally managed to croak the name “Renata” in a hoarse whisper.

  The woman knelt and kissed him, her lips lingering momentarily, her long dark hair and soft breaths tickling his face. He strained his heavy limbs to caress her cheek yet found the effort fruitless. Tears stung his eyes as he attempted to call her name once more, but his voice had gone.

  “O spirit of the great Westfarian,” She whispered in the song-like language of the Elysian’s, “whose fame is still a presence in the world and shall endure as long as the son’s, my love, who has met an awful fate in the wilds of the mortal plane, is hindered in his path along that lonely hillock; he has been turned aside by past deeds given form.”

  Renata cupped some of the running water in her hand and poured it into Aichlan’s mouth, past cracked lips, and caked bile. She took on an otherworldly glow as she embraced the light of the dawn to mend his broken body. Aichlan, his senses previously deadened, was overcome by the smell of rosemary and lemongrass, as a warmth like the rays of the spring sun cloaked his weary and broken form.

  “From all that I have known of him, he is, I fear, already so astray that I have come to help him much too late.” Renata gently washed the blood from her lover’s face, wiping it with the finely embroidered fabric. “And so too, I fear, too late to atone for the role I played in his misfortune.

  “Come forth; with your aged wisdom and paternal love, with bringing guidance that is required to see that he escapes, bring help to him, that I may be consoled.” She smiled faintly and stroked his cheek once before rising to speak into the fog. “For I am Renata the Calm who sends you on; I stride through dreams to arrive from where I most long to return; Love prompted me, that Love which makes me speak.”

  Aichlan wanted to know who she was speaking to in such formal and antiquated tongue, but her touch had left him in a haze. The pain was gone, though many wounds remained. He felt at peace. More so than when he had first accepted death, the tranquility he experienced now was otherworldly.

  “O Lady of virtue,” a haughty child’s voice broke through the sordid silence, dripping in condescension, it spoke in high Elysian with the commanding pomp of a noble “the sole reason why the human race surpasses all that lies beneath the heaven with the smallest spheres, so welcome is your wish, that it is already done, this request would seem to be both tardy and unwarranted; all you need do is heed our will.”

  A shadow approached as Renata faded once more into the swirling mist. Aichlan attempted to stand once more but was overcome with dizziness and lapsed once again into unconsciousness.

***

  Aichlan bolted upright, gasping for breath. He looked down in horror at his bloodstained surcoat, the links that continued to fall to the ground beside him, and the gaping holes in his flesh. With trembling fingers, he pulled the arrow from his chest and marveled, confused by the blood, his blood, upon the tip. His mortal wounds were fresh and open, visible through his bloodstained and tattered uniform. Gingerly exploring the gash, Aichlan winced and pulled back his fingers, now covered in dark red blood he still was not convinced was his own.

  Instinctively he fumbled at his side for his sword, his confidence returned as he gripped the familiar handle. It was bright, or as bright as the dreary wood would suffer, and cold as the grave. The steam of his breath came in short, rapid puffs in the frigid morning air, those that were not caught in his breast upon fractured ribs.

  From the corner of his eye, he noticed a figure approaching from the fog. Aichlan swore and spat out a troubling amount of blood and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Dreading another confrontation, he pulled himself up onto one knee. With considerable effort, he swung out his splinted leg, resting the bulk of his weight on his “good” one, and took a wide and highly unstable defensive stance. Miraculously, or mysteriously, the bone was no longer jutting through the skin. He carried a vague sense of having been healed to some extent, though could not tell if it were a fever dream or reality. For his wounds, a healing would take a month or more to fully mend, any healer that attempted to close even one of his stab wounds in a single sitting would likely be consumed by the very Dawn they called upon. Yet clearly, he had been healed to some degree, though it certainly did not mean he could run or even walk away if needed. The effort to stand had nearly toppled him, and he was barely able to keep his sword leveled in front of him with the one hand.

  “Drop your sword, boy,” the voice from the fog was gruff and booming, familiar. “You’ll not last past opening formalities in a duel against me.”

  Aichlan recognized the lilting Aes Sidhean accent but could not place where he met the speaker before, if ever. He willed his body to stop quaking, to little avail, as he circled his opponent slowly and unsteadily. The expanse of fog was all encompassing, there did not appear to be anywhere to go but straight through whomever stood hidden before him.

  Aichlan swallowed a metallic tasting lump of phlegm and fear, “Be it alive or dead, return me to my rightful state of being. I shall not serve you.”

  Though his voice lacked the conviction he intended, he hoped his steeled gaze would convey his meaning, eyes swollen and ringed in presumably greenish black bruises. Even though it had been over a day since his last meal of hardtack and brackish water, his stomach felt ready to disgorge itself at any moment. Digging deep, he straightened his stance and raised his weapon to eye-level, the ox stance. He shored up the glaring holes in his defense as best he could sans buckler and tensed his aching muscles in preparation to lunge.

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  “Serve me?” The figure chuckled as he cocked his head to the left. “What the bloody hell are you going on about?”

  Aichlan briefly dropped his guard, he knew that voice with certainty now.

  He leveled his sword once more and inched forward, peering hard into the mist. “I know of the dark mages in the Swamps of the mage nation Asketill, those who raise the dead from their earthen bed of slumber to do their bidding…”

  “Bah!” The figure silenced him with a wave of the hand. “If you spent half as much time on your swordplay and less time worried about swamps and mages you’d not be in this predicament.”

  Aichlan lowered his sword and approached the figure. “Who are you? Show yourself.”

  An elder knight in his mid-fifties stepped from the swirling screen of fog. He wore a silver cuirass and pauldrons covered in organic designs and gold inlay, emblazoned with the image of a sylph. His doublet and trousers were of a muted green, his greaves silver; he was easily identified as a knight of Aes Sidhe. He had a noble face, and his movements were rigid and deliberate, much like his manner of speaking.

  A scar ran across his left cheek over his nose and past his right eye. Strands of black were still found in his grey crewcut. Crow’s feet lined his hard eyes, still with a trace of the blue that they once were, despite having dulled with age. His forest green cape fluttered gently as he approached, bordered in silver geometric designs, the emblem of a sylph in the middle.

  Aichlan held his fist to his heart, and then thrust it out, opening his hand to him. With the severe expression of a military officer, the man returned the salute as a hint of a smile crept over Aichlan’s face. His grin was met with the stoic expression of a face marred by a lifetime of scowling.

  “Well met, General Garrick.”

  “Well met, Aichlan.”

  Aichlan sheathed his sword and plopped himself down onto the forest floor, clasping his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. He exhaled deeply and examined his surroundings. He smirked and shook his head in disbelief. After several moments, he let out a deep sigh and gestured towards his father.

  “So, if I’m seeing you, then I, too, must be amongst the dead.”

  Garrick nodded solemnly. “Yes, my son, I am afraid so.”

  Aichlan snorted defiantly, avoiding his father’s gaze. “It figures. Is Mother here then?”

  “Is that really your priority? At this juncture?”

  Aichlan looked up at his father. It was just like that old prick to play the stoic uncaring soldier. It was disgusting; one would think that the cold caress of death and the graves embrace would temper such hard-assery. He bit his tongue; however, he had butted heads with the man for at least sixteen of his twenty-six years, and knew when to fold, as it were. Still, it had been some time since he last had to deal with the old man’s obstinacy.

  “And why not?” he asked testily.

  Garrick snorted and crossed his arms across his chest. “Because there is important work to be done. Your fuck up needs to be corrected.”

  Aichlan dropped the issue with an indifferent shrug; the man would accept nothing less than victory in all endeavors, and he was in no mood for arguments. His father was the same man he always was, which was a relief in its own right. He paused to take in the clouds and the nothingness that spread in all directions. He eventually relaxed and ran his hands through his hair, still thick with dried blood and filth.

  “Alright then, but answer me this,” Aichlan began.

  “Hmm?”

  “is this it? How did I come to be in this wretched wood? I thought Elysium was a paradise among the clouds and whatnot.”

  “Your lady, who took pity upon you, beseeched the goods for favor.” Garricks face was red as he ground his teeth, more than a hint of irritation painting his tone and curt reply. “They called your corpse from its resting place in that damnable fort and charged me with being your guide.”

  Aichlan rolled his eyes and turned his attention back to the wall of fog around them. “Tell them to put me back then, I want nothin’ to do with any of it.”

  Garrick shot Aichlan a look of disdain. “Don’t give me that shite boy.”

  Aichlan shuddered at the all too familiar dysfunction of his paternal relationship. Garrick let a harsh whistle pass his lips as he rubbed a calloused hand against his close-cropped beard. Grey haired and hard lined, it was a face Aichlan had not forgotten, but still uncanny to see again.

  “Osric’s army has routed the forces of Elysia. What remains are scattered and wounded soldiers with no order or directives. Now then, nothing stands between Osric and the temple at Nassica.”

  “And what does that have to do with me?” Aichlan asked as painfully propped himself up against the trunk of an ancient beech. “I’ve fulfilled my obligation to The Order; I’ve died for the oaths I swore. There is nothing else I am willing or able to do.”

  Like a specter, Garrick hurled himself across the distance, eyes flashing with unbridled rae as he slammed his fist into the tree his son had propped himself against. Aichlan reflexively raised his sword, but Garrick easily batted it away, causing him to fumble the weapon into the underbrush.

  “You swore those oaths to the Priestess Renata! Your obligation to her supersedes those of The Order! You have fulfilled nothing, you insolent whelp! You have failed in your duty!”

  Each word enunciated with fire and spittle caused Aichlan to shrink further back against the trunk; if he could, he would have melted into its wood and become one with its gnarled mess of errant branches and roots. When the old man’s tirade had finished, and he had several moments to collect himself, Aichlan delicately pushed his fathers’ arm from his path and sidestepped him, slinking further into the wood.

  “Supersedes my oaths to the Order?” Aichlan took a deep breath and ran his hand through his grimy locks. “She is a mere figurehead, not some—”

  Garrick grabbed Aichlan roughly by the collar, bridging the distance Aichlan had built between them in an instant. Aichlan struggled briefly and broke free, and hastily threw down his gauntlet as he debated on whether or not to square up against his father. Garrick prepared to strike his son as he had oft done before but restrained himself; his fist gave way to a finger held up in warning. His features, a mask of rage and contempt Aichlan could not remember finding purchase in one so in control of their emotions, softened if only slightly.

  “You have failed her boy. You have failed us all.”

  Aichlan brushed off his father’s words with a sneer. “Don’t be so bloody dramatic!”

  “Dramatic, eh? How about the fact that all bloody hell is about to be unleashed upon the world and there is naught to do about it with the Priestess dead!”

  “I loved her!” Aichlan yelled, tears forming in his eyes.

  Garrick summoned more words of venom, Aichlan could see the well-trodden barbs dripping from the old man’s quivering lips. In a moment of mercy, or realization of the futility such a conflict would undoubtedly ignite, he swallowed his insults, spitting at Aichlan’s feet instead.

  Aichlan wiped his eyes with the back of his bandaged hand, embarrassed at his own emotional outburst and still fearful of Garrick’s expected wrath for his moment of weakness. He stood trembling for several moments, he tried to swallow the words he knew he should not say, but they had already begun tumbling from his mouth.

  “It pains me! It pains me that the woman I love will be slaughtered or worse at the hands of that fiend Osric. But it pains me even more to know that if I were to somehow avert her fate, I could feel her warmth only in stolen visits during the night like some common thief.”

  Garrick snorted and drew himself back up to his baseline regal posture. “You knew—”

  Aichlan shook his head and swiped at the air as if to attack the very thought. “I didn’t know!”

  The spark of uncharacteristic vitriol lit up his father’s eyes once more, and Aichlan recoiled, struck by the fleeting thought that this man was not whom he said he was. As if reading his son’s expression, Garrick bit his tongue.

  “I didn’t know her gentleness, how her smile, both warm and sincere, outshined the very sun.” Aichlan dropped his gaze, remembering his love with bitter sweetness. “I didn’t know that the sight of her tears would cause me to seek vengeance upon those that caused them. I would rather die than be denied the right to call her my own.”

  Garrick struck Aichlan hard in the stomach, causing him to double over and fall to his knees. The pain was a welcome distraction from the torment he felt inside, a pain of heart and soul. He cursed his own weakness and wished to curl up and wallow in it forever, to not have to confront the reality that the woman he loved more than life itself would die.

  “Are you done sniveling like a whipped bitch?”

  As quickly as the pain came, it abated leaving Aichlan sobbing in the fetal position at Garrick’s feet, alone with his thoughts and anguish, feeling the burn of his father’s disapproving glare.

  Garrick kicked Aichlan hard in the ribs. “Get up, boy,”

  Aichlan rose slowly, wiping blood from his mouth.

  “You still wanna look at me in that way, boy?” Garrick taunted, leaning in so close as to send flecks of spittle into his face. “Save it for the battlefield. Save it for people who would actually take your life.”

  Aichlan instinctively stood at attention, defiance and anger clearly written across his face. Garrick glowered back and raised his fist but lowered it again as he shook his head. This was a battle decades in the making, a challenge he took up countless times, and lost just as many. The veins on his neck and forehead looked as if they would burst as his blood burned with resigned humiliation. Hot tears streaked his dirt caked face.

  “Yes sir, General,” Aichlan laid as much sarcasm into the last word as possible.

  “Fix your uniform.” Garrick spat as he turned away from his sniveling son. “Have my years of tutelage gone to pot then?”

  Aichlan obliged reflexively, and straightened his stained and tattered surcoat, chains of his broken mail fell down to the ground below. He paused, conflicted between standing in place or going over to pick up his weapon. He dismissed the thought as childish traumas, and shuffled over to reclaim his blade, relived by his father’s reticence.

  “Your mother and I wanted nothing more than for you to find a woman and raise a family of your own. There is no greater reward in life. I do to you as my father did to me for it is effective and will make a great soldier of you someday.”

  Aichlan scoffed, but Garrick chose to ignore him as he turned back around. “But yours is a forbidden love, and at the moment inconsequential. If you do nothing, her blood shall equally stain your hands as Osric’s.”

  “What can I hope to accomplish against so massive an army?” Aichlan laughed without humor. “What should I do, haunt them into submission?”

  Garrick grinned, whatever color had remained in Aichlan’s face quickly drained. “Something like that, yes.”

  “What is this all about father, where the hell are we?" Aichlan looked around, gesturing broadly to the fog and the wood, turning back to his father with an expression of disbelief. "You’re dead, and I’m to assume that I am as well, who put you up to this?”

  “I volunteered, so to speak. There is much you don’t know and much that shall remain unknown, but you will find out nothing unless you fulfill your obligations.” He snatched Aichlan’s sword from his hands and gave it a quick once over. “This is pitiful.”

  Aichlan stepped back with a bewildered expression, expecting more trickery before dropping to his haunches. He did not feel dead, though knew that by all accounts he should be. If he had perished, he wanted to know by whose hand he was revived and for what purpose. He looked up to his father for some sort of hint that it was a joke or perhaps a dream, but his face was set in stone.

  “Say again?”

  “Your sword boy, it’s in piss-poor shape.”

  "I was in a battle, a siege, man, forgive me for-"

  Before aichlan could speak further, Garrick effortlessly lifted him to his feet by his collar.

  “Aichlan, you are my son, and your mother loves you.”

  Aichlan laughed a short mirthless bark, not paying his father much attention. He had heard that line before; it had almost become a joke. His father was a notoriously taciturn man; Aichlan doubted he even told his wife that he loved her.

  Garrick abruptly thrust the sword into his hands, nearly toppling him with the force of the gesture. He then grabbed Aichlan brusquely by the jaw with his other hand and turned his head, forcing their eyes to meet. His father’s gaze was unexpectedly warm, and it made him uncomfortable. The pain of losing him rushed back to him in an instant and threatened to bring tears anew.

  “As do I.”

  Aichlan’s glare turned to shock at his father’s never-before-heard admission. For as long as he could remember his father had only cared about “the mission,” and praise was something one had to work diligently to attain. Even then, it was fleeting, and former accomplishments became weapons to motivate him towards greater goals. He seriously doubted the man had even held him as an infant. Perhaps it took his death to see what he had lost.

  “But I swear on the Light, if you fail me again, I’ll deny ever having a son.”

  Aichlan snorted and looked away, “A well-worn threat never acted upon by a prideful old man.”

  “Now stand up straight, boy!” Garrick thundered, causing Aichlan to bolt upright. “And for Dawn’s sake, speak as if you weren’t educated in the Slums of Westfaire. Have some pride.”

  “Should I not be proud of my heritage?” Aichlan teased, latching onto the moment of levity full tilt.

  “By the way,” Garrick smirked as he took several steps back. “A few words of advice before you go.”

  Aichlan’s grin faded as Garrick beamed. “Aw hell….”

  “Hold your breath, son.”