23. DEATH’S DOOR

It was not long before voices reached them, through the fog. Elyse's cries had roused more than a few in the village, and they came to her, some carrying torches. Old, confused faces, folk that stopped and stared once they saw her and Martim amongst the reeds. They formed a circle around her, watching her from the shore, but none of them approached. They simply continued to stare. Torchlight danced on the surface of the lake’s water. “Help!” Elyse cried out to them, but they were unmoving. She slammed her fist into the lake’s surface, and it crackled where the beginnings of ice clung to the reeds, but they did not react. “He is dying, he must be brought to your apothecary, he needs herbcraft and healing!” Still, they did not move, and finally Elyse snapped. “Fools! We have just broken your curse, he and I. Will you just leave him here to die?!”

A murmur ran through the assembled folk at the mention of the curse, shocked glances, and then utter silence. “How d’you know about that?” asked one old, sharp-nosed woman finally, her hair fine silver and her face wizened with age. “And what do you mean, you broke it?”

“I mean it is undone!” Elyse left Martim’s side and rose to her feet, glaring at the folk milling about. “You rotten wretches, move him! Must I beg?!”

But the old woman who had spoken up before was shaking her head, and her eyes were flashing anger. “You…the both of you, I knew you weren’t normal,” she spat. “You show up here, and the next thing we know, Valerie and Mercy are both dead, and we’re supposed to believe that one killed the other. Anyone who knew those girls knew they’d never have done that! And now you’ve gone off to the island, stirring up trouble…” The old woman looked past her, into the boat, and her eyes widened at the sight of Cecil and Flit, the cat laying curled by the wizard’s arm, and the cardinal nesting in his hair. She looked back at Elyse with sudden realization writ large on her face. “You’re a-”

“Just what is going on here?” a commanding voice boomed, through the crowd, and the folk gathered nearly jumped out of their skins. They parted to let through Ritter, with Finnel at his side. The innkeep had his sword strapped to his belt, and he carried himself with straight-backed authority, his clear blue eyes sharper than ever. “Well?” he snapped, and the folk all jumped again, and Elyse nearly jumped with them. “What do you fools think you’re doing? Why are you just standing about? Take the lad to Minerva’s shop. You two. Now! The rest of you clear off!” Ritter pointed to two men who, though their hair was starting to go gray, were wide of shoulder and broad-armed from a life of hauling fish.

The two men that Ritter had pointed to actually took a step forward before the old woman cried out again. “Now just you hold on a moment, Jak Ritter-” she began.

“SILENCE, DOG,” Ritter roared, and the glare he gave her was so fierce that she actually gasped and stumbled backwards, very nearly falling over. “There is no time for us to hold on for a moment! A man is dying and might be saved; all else can wait! Now move, you worthless whoresons, move, or I’ll strip the hide from your backs!”

There was no questioning after this. Ritter spoke with such utter, overwhelming authority that the stunned villagers obeyed without question. The two well-muscled men waded out to drag the boat ashore and hoisted up Martim between them, easily. Cecil leapt out from the boat as soon as he was near dry land, and darted off into the trees; Elyse carried Flit, so delicate, on her shoulder. The bird was burbling mournfully, and would not take his eyes from his wizard. Even as this was done, Ritter was still barking orders. “Jace! Yes man, you! Take your horse and go fetch Minerva, bring her back with all speed. You see the fire, across the lake? That’s where she is. Finnel, you come as well. Help carry their gear. I won’t have them being robbed.”

And then the next thing she knew, the innkeep was by her side, very nearly lifting her out of the reeds as he took her by the arm. “Are you injured as well?” he asked, his soft voice a startling contrast to the harsh, clipped tones he had used only moments before. When she shook her head, he heaved a sigh of relief. “What happened?”

“There was a demon,” she told him, as they walked along. She too did not take her eyes off of Martim. It felt a relief, at least, to see that he would be treated. “It bit him, poisoned him.”

Ritter sighed again, and shook his head, grim. “And…is it done, then?”

“Yes. The demon is dead.” After a moment, she added, “And Ezekiel, too.”

He stiffened, and missed a step at that, but his face showed no emotion. “Good,” he said simply. “That’s good.”

Minerva’s shop was larger than most of the houses in town, but still it felt small, crowded as it was. Tables stood by every window, holding potted plants, and a large shelf took up one wall, lined with mortars and pestles of increasing sizes, pots and pans, bushels of clipped and dried herbs, and even some precious, cloudy glassware, along with what appeared to be two sheep skulls. Dried gourds hung from the ceiling, and it was thick with the pleasant scent of plants.

The village folk brought Martim to the back, where Minerva kept a sickroom. It was sparse, bare, with nothing but a chair, a well-made bed, and a bucket in the corner. The village folk laid the wizard down on the bed, far too roughly for Elyse’s taste. “Good,” Ritter told them. “Now, go fetch some water, and start a fire on the hearth. I know little of herbcraft, but I know they always call for boiling water.”

The two men seemed ready to obey, but one of them paused, turning to Elyse. “Is…is it really true? What you said? That it’s gone?”

“It is,” she told them wearily. They glanced at each other in wonder, and gave her a nod, before moving to obey Ritter’s orders. She barely noticed their question, in truth, let alone their reaction. Her eyes were stuck on Martim, laid out on the bed. She moved unspeaking to examine his blood-soaked shoulder, and Ritter helped her to take off his cloak and leathers, stripping him to his waist.

The wizard’s body was a horror. The wound in his shoulder was deep, very deep, and it seemed fresh blood oozed from it with every heartbeat. Where the rest of his body was pale and cold, that wound was scaldingly hot. But what truly worried her was the black tendrils weaving their way outward from the wound, tracing their way across his flesh. Flit jumped across his wizard’s chest, pecking at these, and chirped angrily when he could not snap them up like he might a worm. Elyse listened to his red song, and it was faint, so faint, drowned out by the tolling of bells. She wormed her hand into his once more. She knew this poison, and knew that simple touch, the reminder of life’s warmth, might serve to keep one attached to the world of the living.

“I’m sorry,” Ritter said quietly.

She whirled on him, glaring. “What are you sorry for? Where is Minerva? Does she not know the meaning of haste?” Except, of course, that she knew very well what he was sorry for. He was sorry because he knew there was nothing that could be done. No herbcraft would save someone this far gone. More fool him, Elyse thought fiercely. My Art and herbcraft both may heal him. Martim is strong. It was not long before Minerva arrived, heralded by the sound of galloping hooves, though the wait seemed agonizing. And the moment the stout old woman saw Martim, she began barking orders with nearly as much authority as Ritter had when he dispelled the crowd.

It all seemed like such a whirlwind, after that. Minerva ordered Martim stripped entirely, and he was wrapped in linen towels soaked in hot water, for his cold flesh, and a compress of ice-cold water for his searing hot wound. When she heard that it was a demon that had bitten him, she cursed, and asked whether Elyse had any bit of the flesh of the creature. When she said no, Minerva cursed again. The apothecary crushed dried leaves into a powder, and blew it into the wound; she ground a paste of berries and leaves in her mortar and pestle, and smeared it over the wasted flesh; she brewed an earthy broth of mushrooms and herbs and fed it to the wizard in gentle sips, stroking his throat until he swallowed.

Elyse stayed by Martim’s side as this was done, sitting in a chair, holding his hand to anchor him to the living world, listening to his red song. All of this did seem to have some effect on him. He regained some of his color, and it seemed that the black tendrils retreated a bit. Within the song of his body, it seemed the bells quieted, and she did what she thought she could do to aid with the Art, but in truth, did not know whether it had any effect at all.

And in the end, the wizard lay in the bed, wrapped in the sheets, with his shoulder bandaged tightly, but still he was unconscious. Minerva had long since dismissed Ritter and the other men, and she stood by the end of the bed, her tight bun frazzled. “Well,” she said softly, “That’s it, then. I’m sorry.”

Elyse blinked, then looked up at the woman. She did not like the look of pity that she saw there. “What do you mean, that’s it? He’s…he’s getting better, he’s gaining strength-”

“I mean I’ve done all I can do,” Minerva told her gently, wiping her hands on her smock. “And this will be the best he’ll ever be.” She bit her lip, and Elyse could see tears in the old woman’s eyes, a pitying look that she detested. “I am sorry, girl. I really am. You both deserve more, and I’d give my own hand if I thought it would heal him. But he’s not getting any better than this.”

Elyse rose, her eyes flashing. “How can you say that,” she snapped, but she knew very well how it could be said. If this was the best health that Martim could be brought to, well, he was still on the edge of death. “There must be something else…damn you, we saved you, can’t you save him?! We saved this entire damned village, isn’t there something you can do?!”

If Minerva was angered by her outburst, she showed no sign of it. The apothecary simply shook her head sadly, drawing in a long, shuddering breath. “We can leave him to sleep overnight. Get some rest. But it won’t do much. And…” she reached into her satchel, held out her hand. In it lay three midnight-black berries. “Gurmwort,” she said. “If he suffers, this will give him a peaceful passing.”

Elyse stared at the black berries, feeling adrift, as if her body were not her own. She glanced back at the wizard. He was pale, his breathing labored, and Flit was nestled up in the crook of his neck. The black eyes of the cardinal stared at her, before he closed them slowly, and went to sleep. All she had done to bring him back. All she had done to find him. And it was all for nothing. No. I will not let it be so.

In that silence, they both became aware of the sounds of shouts, then, coming from outside of the shop. “What is that?” Elyse asked, pocketing the gurmwort berries.

“Damned stupid foolishness is what it is,” Minerva snarled, and stalked way. Elyse gave Martim a reluctant glance, and then followed her out to the main room of the shop, watching as the apothecary carefully selected a sturdy iron pot with a long wooden handle. “Take my advice, and never bet a tin penny on folk’s good sense. Stay back there with your wizard, girl, and don’t you worry about it.”

But Elyse did not do so; she stayed behind the apothecary, peering over her shoulder as the stout woman went to open the door of the shop, standing on her tiptoes to see what was happening outside.

In the front of the shop, Ritter stood guard by the door, and surrounding him were perhaps a dozen villagers, nearly all gray of hair, dirty-clothed and frowning, some holding torches. Ritter himself was red-faced, and he had his hand on the hilt of his sword, though he had not drawn it yet. “I told you folks to get back to your damned homes-” he was in the midst of saying, but he was drowned out by cries and shouts when Minerva opened the door.

“Minerva! What’s happening? What have the outsiders done?”

“Why do you have them locked up inside your shop?”

“Are they…is there really a witch?”

“What’s happening,” the apothecary shouted them down, slapping her iron pot into one hand, “is that my shop is closed, and if you don’t leave my doorstep I’ll beat you bloody! Don’t look at Ritter, look at me! You’ll wish Ritter had been the one to deal with you once I’m through! I have a wounded man in there, and he needs his rest. I will not have you fools causing a ruckus on my doorstep while he tries to sleep!”

“They’re a witch! And a wizard! I saw their familiars!” It was the same silver-haired, hawk-nosed old woman that had given so much trouble by the shore. She stepped forward in front of the crowd, wagging her finger. “And you’ve known it, haven’t you? You’ve been hiding them from us!”

“Hold off, Noss.” This was a low, rumbling voice, from one of the broad-shouldered men who had helped carry Martim. He gave the old woman a disapproving look, but she just glared back at him with utter contempt. He shook his head, and then turned back to the shop. “Look, Ritter, we just want some answers. The girl in there told everyone…” he trailed off, and the crowd quieted, suddenly silent, unwilling to speak of the curse even after it may be gone. “...did they really go out to the island? Is…is it really done?”

“Nonsense,” spat Noss, her withered face a mask of fury. “It’s a bane, a bane, the Art’s all a bane! How do we know it wasn’t they who killed Mercy and Valerie?”

A murmur ran through the folk assembled there, but Minerva cut it off with a slam of her pot on the stone wall of her shop. “Still your wicked tongue,” she bellowed, louder than Elyse would have thought possible for the woman. “I will not listen to this slander! Valerie held me hostage, and she killed Mercy - she told me as much - and planned to kill me as well! All in the service of a dark power which promised her revenge for her family. They saved me!”

“Of course you’d say that,” Noss spat contemptuously. “If they’ve ensorceled you. I know how such things work. You’d be their slave now, and -” suddenly, the old woman saw behind Minerva, and caught Elyse’s eye. “There she is!” she crowed. “There’s the witch right now!”

The crowd of folk muttered to themselves. None of them seemed so convinced as Noss was, but there were angry mutterings, and hot words back and forth between those who agreed and those who did not. Ritter was yelling at those arguing to return to their homes, and Minerva and Noss were both dressing each other down. Finally, Elyse grew sick of their words, and a dark rage brewed within her. These ungrateful, wretched swine. She had no time for this nonsense.

She elbowed her way out of the shop and cried out, “ENOUGH!” She glared at the crowd, fierce and wrathful, and though she stood a good head shorter than the smallest of them they grew silent. “You are right,” she told them, contempt thick in her voice, “I am a witch. And the man who accompanies me, he is a wizard.”

“I knew it,” Noss interrupted, jabbing a finger towards her. “These outsiders, they came here, and they-”

Elyse spun around to the old woman and called out to the shadows with the Art, and all at once the darkness around Noss grew black as pitch, and her own shadow loomed and wheeled around her. She screamed, and other folk did as well, before Elyse let her shadow go back to normal. “He and I had no interest in your silly little village,” she shouted over the dying murmurs and the hushed shock of the frightened folk, “But out of the kindness of our hearts, when we learned you were cursed, we undid it for you. Yes, it is done, and no, I will not speak of it now! You hold the Art against me, and yet you needed the Art to have it broken. I will not tolerate such ingratitude! You have let the curse fester and rot, and the wizard and I have done nothing but risk our lives to heal you.” Under their fearful stares, she jabbed her finger back at the shop. “He lies now gravely wounded, all out of his service to you! And you dare, you dare to come upon me with accusations now?”

This last she said while staring directly at Noss, and the old woman’s legs quaked. She still managed to find the courage to open her mouth, but her tone was much more conciliatory now. “We still need to know - we need to know all that’s happened, we need proof it’s undone, we need to know the full truth of what happened with Valerie and Mercy-”

“Wait until tomorrow,” Elyse interrupted her, and the old woman slammed her mouth shut. “Since your backwards apothecary cannot heal him, I must do so myself tonight. Tomorrow we will tell you all you wish to hear. But heed my warning! If I am interrupted in my craft - if I hear so much as a mouse’s peep tonight - if any of you dares enter that shop - I’ll make you rue the day you were born! I’ll hex you ‘til your boils have boils! I’ll wither your crops and poison your lake! I’ll haunt your nightmares! And when he wakes up, he’ll burn your whole worthless village to cinders! Leave not one stone stacked upon another! You’ll beg to have your curse back…!”

As she spoke, she stepped forward, jabbing a finger at the crowd; and despite that she was so much smaller than any of them, despite the fact that they were many and she was only one, they shrank back from her. Old faces, tired faces, gray-haired and dull, beaten eyes stared back at her, but she had no pity for them. “Well?” she hissed. “Am I going to be left in peace this night?”

Elyse stared at Noss as she asked this, and the old woman’s mouth opened and closed several times. She cast an eye around at the crowd, and none seemed enthusiastic to take her side now. She looked past Elyse, to the shop, where Ritter and Minerva stood, but they had only cold stares for her as well. “Fine,” she muttered grudgingly. “You and your man will be given time to recover, for tonight. But you must give us answers after.”

“Good,” Elyse replied. “Now leave.” When the folk still milled about, lingering, she stamped her foot and snarled, “I said leave!”

The shadows stretched and loomed; they grew horns and claws that reached out as if to grab the villagers, and with shouts and yells and screams they fled, some of them dropping their torches as they ran back into the fog.

Elyse did not bother to watch them go. She spun and marched directly back to the shop. Minerva and Ritter looked as if they both wanted to talk to her, but she ignored them. “I don’t give the slightest damn what you do,” she snapped, as Ritter said something to her about setting a guard on the door. “Just leave me in peace and let me do my work!”

She slammed the door behind her, and stalked her way back to the sickroom. She was furious; furious at the impotence of the villagers, who had lived in the shadow of such wickedness for so long and now, it seemed, nearly resented her for ending it; furious at Minerva’s impotence to heal Martim, furious at her own impotence to do anything.

When she opened the door and took a good look at the wizard’s face illuminated in candlelight, her heart sank. What color that Minerva’s treatments had restored to him already seemed to be fading away, and he looked almost corpse-like already, though he clearly still breathed. She pulled the sheets back and saw that, indeed, the black tendrils had begun to spread out from his shoulder again, creeping across his chest, up his neck. She held his hand, so cold now, and she knew even before she listened that his red song was drowning in a cacophony of bells.

There is only one thing I can do. Mercy please, let me get an answer.

She looked at Flit, the little cardinal nestled sleeping next to his master’s head, and she reached out to pluck him up. To her surprise, the bird awoke, and chirped in alarm upon seeing her hands reaching out to him, and fluttered his way to the windowsill to avoid her. That was good, at least. Perhaps his wing was not injured so badly if he could still make short flights such as this. “Please, little one,” she told him. “Your master is dying, and none here can help him. I will do my best to heal him, but I must have the utmost concentration to save him. Can you leave him alone with me? Just for a little while? It may mean his life.”

Flit stared at her suspiciously with a beady black eye, his crest bobbing up and down, giving short, muttering chirps. It irked her that she did not speak the bird-tongue and could not tell what he was saying. You will have to ask Martim to teach you, once he wakes. And he will wake. He will live. He will. Finally, the cardinal pecked at the stone of the windowsill. She had no idea whether that meant he assented or not, but he did not flinch as she approached, and let her pick him up. Birds were so light, so delicate, she thought, as she pushed back the curtain and reached out to place Flit on a nearby tree branch. The familiar burbled something to her, a long, complicated series of twitters and tweets, and she thought he must be saying something important, but she could only stare back at him uncomprehendingly. Finally, he fluttered away to a higher branch, and out of sight.

Elyse turned back to Martim, sitting down in the chair next to his bed. She dearly wished that there might be another way, but she could see no other option. She stroked the dark ring that lay on her finger, and it was still cold and dead. “Father,” she murmured. “Father, if you can hear me, please answer. He is dying, and I do not know how to save him. Please.” At first, she got no answer, and she fell into a bleak despair. That was it, her only option, and it would not work.

But then her ring began to grow warm on her finger, and in all the corners of the room, the shadows lengthened. And within them, something writhed, and raveled, and spun.

===***===

A long, rolling field of flowers stretched out before Martimeos, as far as the eye could see. The sky was black and dead, starless, but the flowers themselves glowed with their own silvery light, translucent, like ghosts.

How had he come to be here? Memories whispered to him, but it was like trying to catch hold to the wind. Slowly, slowly, they drifted back, only when he stopped trying to seize them. He remembered the glimmerling, fighting it, killing it, and the demon that came after. But then the witch…Elyse, yes, that was her name…she had told him that he had been poisoned. And she had seemed very frightened, too. And then…

“I think,” he said aloud, to no one at all, “I might be dead.”

He felt nothing at this thought. He felt more surprise that he felt nothing than he felt surprise, or sorrow, or anger at the thought of being dead. And in that moment, then, it made sense to him. He would not like to be dead, but in the end, it happened to everyone.

You’ll never find out what happened to your brother.

That was a little more upsetting, but still, he had always thought it was a long shot that he’d get definite answers on that anyway. And it wasn’t true, besides. Most likely, his brother was bones. Maybe he’d meet him here in the Lands of the Dead.

You will never see Vivian again.

That stung. He had longed for the days that he might return to sweet, golden-haired Vivian, to her love. And yet there was a tiny part of him that had always known things would never be the same once he went back. The world was full of love that had long since turned to dust.

Elyse may die trying to save you.

Guilt roiled him at that one. He had not asked the witch to come with him, damn her. If she made it back safely, he wondered what she would do with his corpse. Would she take care of Flit?

But all of these were thoughts for the living, and in time, they faded, and he was left with a quiet, cold emptiness, a final calm. He was dead, and nothing mattered much for him anymore. He no longer belonged to the world of the living, had no power to change things there in any way. There was only the Lands of the Dead now, and whatever mysteries lay beyond the veil. The flowers that seemed woven from moonlight stretched out endlessly before him, a sea of silver, of cold and silent comfort, of the end.

Except, far in the distance, he could see a knot of darkness growing in that waving, silvery sea. And all at once, his newfound emptiness was shattered.

He knew what lay there, somehow. In that black stain, that knotted blot on the landscape, like a hole torn in the silver light, a hole to utmost darkness. He knew who lay there. He had heard his voice in his dreams. He had tried to deny it, tried to convince himself that it was mere nightmare, that it was simply limited to his dreams; he had foolishly ignored it, not wanting to think of it, even as it darkened his thoughts more and more, and now he was not ready for what lay there. He knew, he knew, he knew it was real, and knew terror as well, and thin panic. He couldn’t face that, he couldn’t, he couldn’t, he couldn’t -

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The ruined face, the staring eye -

I’m so glad I’ll get to see you again.

To his horror, his feet moved against his will, marching him forward, his boots trampling the ghostly flowers, forward, forward towards that knot of darkness in the distance. “No,” he moaned, “No, please, mercy, please!”

But it came on, inexorable, the flowers rolled before him. And in this timeless place of death, the distance meant nothing. He was a single step away, he was a thousand steps away, he was as distant as a dim, blinking star. It took but a moment, it took a lifetime, but he was there, struggle as he might, he was there. And he could see what the dark blight was on the fields of the dead, now.

It was a tangle of blackthorn vines.

Humongous, impossibly large, so large it seemed they must claw at the very roof of the world itself. There were vines of every thickness, some thin and spindly as he had seen in life, and others were as thick around as a house, thicker, thick around as his entire village had been, and their thorns the size of castles, an entire land of thorns growing like a tumor among the flowers, like a blasphemy, and among them grew countless number of the wicked red flowers, like oozing sores. And high above, looking up to where those thorns stretched out into the starless sky, countless demons flew like gnats among the thorns. The black-feathered snake demon that he had faced with the glimmerling, only an endless number of them, undulating on a breeze he could not feel and they opened their beaks and a scream of endless gonging bells rang forth, forever in that black, in the dark.

That knot of darkness seemed to breathe, no, to beat, like a heart.

It was filthy, it was diseased, it was wrong. It reeked of rot and death, the stink of the grave. This wickedness, this gargantuan perversion, should not exist - the gods themselves should not allow it to be, how could it be allowed? Such a revulsion rose in Martimeos’ heart and joined with the terror there, and this was not the worst, he knew, he knew now the worst lay within.

But he could no more resist the call than he might have willed his heart to stop beating while he still lived. And so he followed a path into the endless labyrinth of vines, the labyrinth he had seen before in his dreams, the path of dust.

And at the start of the path, tangled in the wall of vines, pierced by a thousand thorns, was a tall and slender man. Blood ebbed from his cuts, stained his fine floral-patterned robes, soaked his ruffled blouse, and soaked into the thirsty earth beneath him. It caked his face, once handsome, even regal, but now torn and tattered, and his eyes stared out a ruin of broken madness.

Martimeos knew this man, had seen him before. Knew him from his clothes, but he thought he would know him even if he had been naked. It was Ezekiel, the glimmerling.

“P-please,” Ezekiel begged him, blood flying from the scraps of his lips. “You have to tell him.”

Martimeos stopped, only for a moment, to hear this damned soul’s final plea.

“Please,” the man went on, and the blood coursed from his wounds as he strained against the thorns. “Please, please, oh please, I didn’t know, I didn’t know, I…I thought I tended an orchard…the new buds must be plucked to allow…Please! Please, you must tell him, I did not know! Forgive me, please! Mercy, I beg of you, mercy!”

This was his last, agonized howl. From deep within the thorns came…some snarl, that of an unseen beast, vast and hungry and full of wrath, a beast too gargantuan to understand. A growl that sounded like the very earth itself was splitting open, far in the distance. An impossible sound. The vines strained, constricted, tightened, and Ezekiel was torn screaming deeper into them, and the screams did not stop until they grew too distant to hear. He left behind only his blood in the dust.

Better that he might never have known. Kinder that his very soul might have been destroyed than to learn the awful truth. But there was only cruelty and damnation in this place.

Martimeos was pulled on.

The path was endless, and winding, and downward, ever downward. He walked a world of thorns, walked a dozen lifetimes of them, and he knew as he did that he was coming to the rotten heart of this place. What light there was in this place died, until the only source of light was himself, a white light that burned from within him but which the darkness pressed in on more and more, and he knew that if this deep and impossible black should swallow that light that his soul would be snuffed out with it. But still he was pulled on.

Until, finally, the halls of thorns opened up into a room where the walls disappeared into the distance, where the ceiling could not be seen, a monument of darkness, and far off in the distance, in the center of it all, was a small point of light.

No, no, no, no no no no no-

But there was no denying it. He could not even scream. His throat seized, and onward he was drawn, onward towards that light, closer and closer, and in the center of it sat a small figure, a child, with shoulders hunched, and barefoot, in simple loose linen clothing dyed a bright blue and green. Light came from the child, much as light seemed to come from Martimeos himself, but this light was stained and yellow, weak, flickering.

“Hello, Martim,” the child said quietly.

It was him. That voice. The voice he had heard since coming to Silverfish; no, even before that. Since coming to what had once been the White Queen’s lands. How could it have been his voice? What was he doing here?

But all those questions seemed so far away to Martimeos, now. It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered, anymore. He was dead. He was dead, and he was back with his friend.

“Hello, David,” he whispered.

The child turned, and Martimeos choked on a scream. He was so ready, ready to see that face, the final, bloody, ruined face he had seen on his friend, the day that the White Queen’s murderers had come to Pike’s Green and carved it open, ruined it despite the fact that David had been just a child, just a damned child, they had butchered him and left him to die, left him bleeding in the grass for Martimeos to find. The face that had haunted him in nightmares for years after, the face that would speak to him in dreams that would wake him in cold sweat and shrieking terror. The face that Martimeos had run from, that dark day, even as David had tried to speak to him through a broken mouth; he had run from the last dying words of his friend, because Martimeos knew that deep down he was a craven, a worthless nothing who could not even offer comfort to his best friend as he died. His best friend who had died alone, and scared, and choking on his own blood.

But it was not this face that greeted him. This David looked much as he had before he had been killed. The calm smile, the one he always wore whenever he had advised Martimeos against the mischief and trouble that the wizard was always finding himself in as a child. Short, ruffled hair, perpetually untouched by a comb, and large ears that seemed almost as if they stuck out sideways. The only thing that seemed different were his eyes; they were old, tired eyes now, too old to be a child’s eyes. “I thought you had forgotten me.”

“Never,” Martimeos said, and the lie tasted bitter in his mouth.

And it was all for naught, because David knew, too. “You lie. You wanted to forget me. You did forget me.”

“I never did,” Martimeos protested, and he hadn’t, not completely, but he would have if he could. The years of nightmares he had, the melancholy that had seemed an endless dark pit that he could never climb out of; he had not wanted to live his life like that, and so…

“You hated me.”

Martimeos buried his face in his hands, and did not try to deny it this time. He had. He had come to hate his friend, the memory of his friend, his friend that he had abandoned to die all alone. The shame of it galled him, it burned him to the core. Even if they had been simple dreams, simple memories, he had tried to bury the remembrance of his friend, out of simple cowardice. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, but he knew that apologies would never be enough for what he had done. He knew he was damned.

“You shut me off, and I was here, all alone, for so long. I could see you, but you built a wall between us.” There was anger in David’s voice, and it was not the anger of a child. It was the anger of something gargantuan that a child was never meant to be; his face contorted in ways that it never would have in life, contorted in ways that no face ever would have, and Martimeos quailed before it. But then it softened, was a normal child’s face again, David's face again, with that calm smile. “But I can see you again, now. And I’m so glad you’re here.”

What happened next was a quiet dream.

The darkness melted away, and Martimeos melted away with it. His memories of the world slipped from him, like tattered smoke born away on the wind. And he wanted this. For as they fled, those memories of a world darkened by fear, ruined by war, he himself changed. His soul shrank, and so did his mind, until he stood by David as a child himself. And all around them was a forest, soft and gentle, sun-dappled and warm, like the forests he had grown up in. Like the forests he and David had spent so much time in, exploring, when they were young. What do I mean, when I was young? I’ve always been young. Nothing else.

“C’mon, Martim,” David told him. His calm smile, and his dark, too-old eyes. “I found a strange boulder I want to show you.”

And so they set off to explore the woods.

Through streams and gullies they splashed, their laughter echoing through the empty forest. It was not long before Martimeos took the lead, venturing ever deeper; that had been how it was when they were young, too. David was not a coward, but he had ever been the voice of caution, whereas Martimeos would always push them both further, and, perhaps, into more danger. But David, now, seemed content to do whatever Martimeos suggested. So the two adventured, clambering over moss-covered boulders to try to catch the snakes that lived in their crevices; climbing lichen-covered trees, hanging from their branches; diving from the top of a small waterfall into a pond of cool, dark water, laughing and catching the frogs that jumped away from them in panic.

Time seemed to melt away, as they spent their time there, and Martimeos felt a joy that he had thought he’d never feel again. He could not know it, though, with all his memories of the horrors and the darkness that had robbed him of that joy gone. It could have been hours, or days, or years in that wood. It was a dream, a beautiful dream of green and never-ending, childish adventure, and his friend, his beloved friend, David. And if the shadows of the forest seemed darker than they should have been, Martimeos did not notice.

At least, at first.

For at some point - A day? A year? An eternity? - at some point in this hazy green dream, Martimeos became aware that they were not actually alone in the forest. In those shadows, those too-dark shadows, someone watched them. From the corner of his eye, Martimeos saw them. They seemed at first to be other children, always hiding out of sight, always darting away quickly when he would turn his head to them. But when he told David of them, his friend simply smiled in that calming way of his, and said, “Martim, there’s nothing there. You know how the shadows can be. Now come on, I bet I can beat you to that big willow, there.”

And with that, David took off running, and Martimeos took off after him, catching up to his friend quickly - he had always been the better runner. They fell upon each other, laughing and panting, and then And for a time, thought of these other children fled from his mind. I don’t care about them. No, that wasn’t right; they weren’t there. David said so. Green, sunny haze and warmth claimed his mind again.

But then there came a time when they walked between the shadows of the trees, and it seemed that David was lost to him. In a moment, between one shadow and the next, Martimeos found himself gone from the green of a warm spring to the chill of autumn, and the leaves of the trees all gone to a brilliant scarlet. He spun around, panicked, but there was nothing there behind him; the path he had walked down was not there anymore, and neither was David.

No! I cannot lose him again!

Lose him? When had he ever been lost?

“Why are you a-wasting your time on this foolishness, wizard?”

Martimeos spun back around again, and there, where once had only been a carpet of red leaves on the gnarled black roots of maples, stood a little man in a scarlet cloak, his face ugly, knotted and twisted as the roots he stood on, his teeth sharp points, and a wicked gleam in his beady eyes.

“Lob, he did a-bargain with you to find him a new home,” the little goblin hissed. “Will the wizard break another promise? Foolish, foolish, to be getting himself a-trapped here, yes? In this…dream.” The fae wrinkled his nose in disgust, glancing about himself, and then he laughed, rather unpleasantly. “Perhaps Lob can be a-helping you. For a price.”

Something nagged at the back of Martimeos’ mind. A wizard? I am a wizard, aren’t I. I know the Art. And I know this fae. But these were dim and desperate whispers in the depths of his mind, and they soon faded. Martimeos shook his head to clear it, the leaves caught in his shaggy hair falling as he did so. He didn’t know this little man, but he knew a fae when he saw one. “Stay back, for I’ve no quarrel with you, goblin,” he began, but his words were cut off.

A nightmarish screech rang throughout the forest, a maddening howl that no animal or man could make, a deep and terrible roar, and there was outrage in it. The shadows of the forest grew darker, blurred together as its echoes faded away.

The goblin cursed, and in an instant there was a cruel, curved, rusty blade in his hands. His sharp pinprick eyes darted about the forest, and then settled upon Martimeos once more. “You care for the truth, don’t you? A tricksy thing, the truth can be. A hard thing.” Another roar screamed through the forest, and there was such hatred in it that it froze the soul. Lob cursed again, and spat. “Look into the shadows, foolish boy,” he snarled, and then he leapt up into the air and never came down, gone. His voice still sounded though, through the wood, fading, laughing, sneering.

“The truth is in the shadows.”

Martimeos scrambled backwards, turned to run from that awful roar - whatever it was, he knew it could devour him, it could eat him whole - and the next thing he knew, the forest blurred around him between the steps of a shadow once more, and when he stepped out of it the forest was green again, warm and green, the bite of autumn and its blazing scarlet gone, and David was at his side once more. He wore a deep, grimacing scowl, now, one that looked quite unusual on his face. It melted away, though, into his usual calm, cool smile once he noticed Martimeos by his side once more. “Martim! Where did you go? You were here one moment, gone the next.”

“There was…a fae…” Martimeos replied to him, breathlessly, as he caught his friend by the hand and began to pull. David remained rooted to the spot, however, staring curiously at him. “There was - didn’t you hear that roar?” Martimeos snapped at him, trying again to tug his friend into motion. “I don’t know what that was, but we have to run-”

“A roar?” David merely shook his head. His eyes seem strange. That smile of his seemed to have a tinge of condescending mockery to it that Martimeos had never noticed in it before. “Martim, I didn’t hear anything. You met a fae? Perhaps he was playing a trick on you.” His hands flexed, and they reminded Martimeos oddly of talons. “We can teach the fae that this is our woods. Can’t we?” He said it as a joke, but there was a strange hunger in his words. His laughter seemed strained. “Come, then. I’m sure it was all a prank by one of them.”

So David said, but as they set off once more among the woods, Martimeos could not get the goblin’s words out of his head. He was a wizard? He could not remember being one, but the idea seemed right to him. The idea had revealed to him an emptiness within that he had not known was there; a hunger, a sense of wrongness, a sense that the Art was his right, if only he knew how. And he could remember the little man’s other words, as well.

Look into the shadows.

So he did, because there would always and forever be a part of him that could not help but want to know the truth. The shadows were darker than they were before. Dark enough to make the green, spring-blessed forest seem cold. Dark enough that staring into them made Martimeos uneasy. The longer he looked into them, deeper he peered into the darkness, the more certain he became that there was something there, something terrible, something hidden and shameful in that dark…

“There!” Martimeos cried, flinging out a hand to point. “David, look! There’s - there’s one, right now, someone else, there-”

“They don’t matter,” David told him. His voice was thick, his eyes tired. His face was half-hidden in leaf-shadow, and it looked strangely jagged and broken. “They don’t matter, Martim. Come on.”

“No.”

Quiet settled between them. The darkness was growing, now, and it seemed to be swallowing up the forest, for all that the sun still shone. David did not respond. He just looked back at Martimeos, unspeaking, his expression unreadable.

He said before that they weren’t there. Now he says they don’t matter. “What do you mean, they don’t matter? What do you mean by that?” Martimeos waited for an answer, but David continued to stare, and then he began to walk again, a few steps ahead of him now, ignoring him. The wind whispered through the leaves, and it seemed to carry language in it, words just on the edge of hearing. “Well, I don’t care what you say,” Martimeos called after him. “There was someone there, and I’m going to find out who.”

David stopped, then. He didn’t turn around. He remained standing in the middle of the forest, his hands at his sides, his back to Martimeos. He didn’t say a word.

Eventually, then, Martimeos turned away from David, turned and looked to the lengthening shadows. He had to know what was there. He stepped into the darkness, and a deathly cold washed over him.

“Would it have been so bad?” David asked softly, from somewhere behind him. His voice seemed like a whisper from very far away.

Martimeos ignored this. The darkness was deeper than a shadow should be. It rose up around him like walls, eating away the forest, but he did not care. There was something here, someone here, huddling alone in the dark. A small figure, very small, and quietly sobbing. A child, hidden, hiding.

“Would it have been so bad to stay?” David’s voice reached him again. Only now it did not seem like David’s voice. Or any child’s voice.

Martimeos reached out to the small figure. The moment he put his hands on them, a weak light seemed to pulse from them, and he could see the hidden child’s face.

And the moment he saw that, the dream ended, shattering around him. The forest, its green warmth, was gone as if it had never been, and the cold reality of death rushed in.

For Martimeos was not a child, he remembered now. He was a wizard, a dead wizard, and his soul was in the black and cold pits of the unholy thorns, here where no light could reach. He and David were not adventuring, exploring in forests of his youth.

Their souls were here in this vast, empty dark.

And here with them was another. The soul of the hidden child, the one who had crouched in dream-shadows, a young girl with frazzled, twintailed hair, wearing a plain, dirtied dress, and she was tangled in thorns as black as night, thorns which held her there in the dark.

And her face was not a child’s face. Not anymore. Not after what had been done to it. Martimeos felt sick upon seeing it, upon seeing what had become of this sad, whimpering thing, as it looked up to him, piteous and abominable.

“What is this,” he whispered to that endless night, and David’s voice answered.

“I tried to…I tried to be kind with them. Show them the woods.” A pause that seemed to go on forever. A pleading note entered David’s voice, as if he knew something was wrong. “I did, Martim. I really did. But…I….they’ve…they’ve all gone quiet, now.”

Martimeos turned, and there David stood, with dirty light running through him. David of the too-big ears, David of the calm, friendly smile. “They?” he asked.

David waved his hand at the gargantuan darkness, and then Martimeos could see small, dim lights dotting it, like stars. And in each weak pool of light there was a child. Or what might have once been a child. Their faces and eyes were hollow, and some of them, their features were twisted, as if they were being mashed like clay into something new. Some of them had blank skin where their mouths should be. And each and every one of them was trapped, tangled in thorns, but they had long since given up their struggle. They hung limply, like wrung-out rags, and struggled to lift their heads to look at him.

Martimeos thought the noises they made might drive him mad.

He could not stand their gaze. There was too much pain in those hollow pits, too much for a child to have born. “David,” he whispered, “Who are they?”

“Shouldn’t you know that?” his old friend replied, and once again his expression was not what a child’s would be, and his child’s voice spoke as if wrapped around a far older tongue. “These are the children of Silverfish.” The smile on David’s face now was not the one that Martimeos remembered. There was cruelty in it now, a hunger, as he looked out at the torment. “Souls given to me as tribute.”

Was it not enough that these children had been killed? Their very souls had to be tormented as well? Martimeos stared at his friend. How is it that he could do this? A tribute of souls?

“What are you?” he asked slowly.

The smile vanished from David’s face, and all at once, he did look like a child, a scared one. “I don’t know,” he whispered miserably.

This was David. Martimeos knew, somehow, beyond all doubt. Perhaps it was because in this place where souls were all that were left to them, one's true nature couldn’t be concealed. Perhaps it was because he felt an odd connection with this…this thing, perhaps simply because they had been such close friends. He knew in his bones, in his heart, in his soul, this was David. And yet this was more than David, somehow. Something enormous. Something terrible. More than a simple child’s soul.

“You have to let them go.” Martimeos did not know where he found the courage to say this, down in this pit, but he knew it for truth, and his light flared a little brighter as he said it. “This is…this is vile, David.” Vile was not the word for it. There were no words for this. All he could do was struggle for a child’s petulant objection. “It’s not fair.”

David stared at him, with that simple, sweet smile, for a long, quiet moment. And then his face became a mask of rage so monstrous that Martimeos thought, for a moment, that his very soul might fly apart. “What’s so unfair about it?” he snarled, and his innocent, clear voice lay on top of something deep and rasping. “What has been done to them, that their parents did not do to me? Was it fair when I died? Was it fair that my life was cut short?”

Martimeos shut his eyes. “No,” he whispered. “It wasn’t.”

“I wanted to live, Martim.”

A boiling, screaming rage was there, in the dark. A monument of hatred lay beneath his words, spoken in a voice that no child could ever have, dripping with venom, a rancor thick as pitch.

“I wanted to live!”

And when he said this last, David’s voice was simultaneously the voice of a child and of something impossibly large, the roar of a bestial god. A sickly light flared forth from him, briefly illuminating the darkness, and Martimeos knew, at last, what it was that was that filled this chamber. For the face that he dreaded, the face that he feared, that he had never been able to look at, that ruined, split face loomed from the dark, ten stories tall, a giant’s corpse, that crooked, bloody jaw, that one ruined eye, and Martimeos heard himself screaming, he buried his face in his hands and sank to his knees. A wind blew a grave-stink across him, and he had seen, in that brief moment of awful, revealing light, seen the black thorn vines that grew from his friend’s wounds, wriggling out of them like worms. And there was hate, there, so much hate, so much that it sickened him, too much hatred for a child’s soul to contain. And he thought, in frantic fear, that this was to be his fate. To have his soul trapped for eternity in this room of death, in this burial chamber that would drive him mad, alone with that face forever, and in that moment he wished that his soul might be destroyed instead.

The roar died away, and so did that light, but that cold stink, the smell of rot and earth, it remained. Martimeos dared to raise his head, only to find David sitting with his back to him once again, close enough to reach out and touch. “I’m sorry,” his friend said, and it seemed like there was genuine sorrow in his voice. “I’m sorry. I know you hate to look at me now.” His shoulders shook, and there were tears clear in his voice.

Again, Martimeos did not try to deny it. This David, whatever he was now, he could taste lies. And it would be a lie to say that he did not. Damn him, but it would be. “David, you…you should go too,” he croaked. “Away from this place. I’ll…I’ll stay with you. Forever, now. I have no place else to go. Let us just leave this place, please.” He could accept that. He and his friend, together again in the afterlife, forever among the silver flowers, or whatever else the Lands of the Dead might offer. Just not here. Not this. Never this.

David did not turn around. “No. I can’t leave. And you can’t stay.” His voice was very tired. “I thought you might. But you won’t.”

Martimeos rose to his feet, trying to ignore the taste of death in the air as he breathed. He might not stay here, but that did not mean he was going to leave David in this pit of damnation. He would drag his friend’s soul out of here by force, if need be. No matter what he was.

But even as he stepped forward, he was stopped. Something gripped him around the arm. No, not something.

Someone.

Martimeos turned, and though there was nothing but darkness behind him, he saw immediately what it was. Who it was. A man-shaped hole in the darkness, blacker than black. A blackness that grinned, a blackness that knew him, a blackness that reached out and grabbed him with a hand that seemed carved from frozen midnight. A hole in the world that laughed and laughed and laughed.

The Dark Stranger.

Perhaps he ought to have screamed. Martimeos thought that was what most people would have done in his boots. But he did not; could not. He felt no terror. Instead, he grinned. Who knew why the Dark Stranger laughed? As the saying went, Nobody did, and Nobody wasn’t talking, but Martimeos could not help but feel that there was something very funny happening, here. There was a joke, if only he could see it. The Dark Stranger said nothing to him, spoke no word, but Martimeos knew, in his head, in his heart, in his soul, in his bones, what The Empty Man wanted him to know.

Not yet.

And then, the Dark Stranger began to rise, rise up into the dark, and Martimeos rose with him.

“I’ll release their souls, Martim,” David said quietly, even as Martimeos was pulled until his feet dangled above the ground. “So long as you make me a promise.”

It seemed impossible, but at that moment, Martimeos forgot who he was being held by. A thousand cautions ran through his head about making oaths and promises to spirits, but he didn’t care. David was a pace below him now, and it was agony, agony all over again to lose him, no matter what had happened, Martimeos knew with certainty this truly was his friend’s soul, lost in this endless dark grave, lost in the heart of this prison of thorns. “Anything,” he cried out, “Anything!”

David looked up at him, then, and it was no longer the child’s face, the face of his friend in life that he saw. It was the corpse face, the ruined and broken face, the face that had haunted his nightmares, pale and crooked, bloody and wrong. And then Martimeos knew what David’s final words had been to him, what his friend had struggled to say in his last moments, before Martimeos had left him to die all alone.

“Help me,” that face called to him from nightmare, in a whisper beyond death.

Martimeos forced himself to look at that face, even as it receded into the dark as he was pulled up, up. He forced himself to look at it even as he could feel his mind begin to crack and strain beneath the sheer panic and horror it filled him with. He may be a coward, but he could look his friend in the face to make a simple oath. He could do that much. “I promise,” he called, hoarse, his voice shaking. “I will.”

David vanished into the darkness, and Martimeos rose, rose in the hands of the Dark Stranger, rose out of the Lands of Death.