Hubris - 56. Ghost Town

Crowe opened his eyes.

Golden rays of morning light spilled through the window, turning the rafters gold. He blinked, overwhelmed by a feeling of deja vu. The culprit for this sense of familiarity moved its tiny legs with practice skill, weaving a web meticulously into shape. He strained his ears, listening for the bells of Inferno. Petras would be in the bedroom in the hallway. Waiting for him. Needing him. Always needing him but never giving anything in return.

It was not the call of a bell he heard, but the loud rumbling snores of a beast. Petras was gone - buried beneath the dirt - and so was the house Crowe had called home for most of his life. But now he was in a new house - his house - and it was a new day. He was with someone who loved him. Someone who he knew would follow him into the depths of Inferno. The beast held him to his chest, a broad arm wrapped around his torso. He didn’t need a blanket because the arm was covered in fur and the arm almost covered his entire torso.

He smiled to himself, running his fingers through a thicket of dark gray fur. I am home. I am safe. I am happy.

It was not his forever home. Happiness, he knew, was not a thing that lasted forever no matter how much one might wish it so. He suspected one day, perhaps even soon, this house and all the houses around it would burn down. At the moment he didn’t care. What mattered was…I’m not fighting this war on my own anymore. There is food. There is a place to rest. It is good not to be alone anymore.

He didn’t want to get up. He knew getting up would wake Barghast. He wanted to enjoy the silence a little longer, wanted to feel the rise and fall of the belly beneath him. But he couldn’t ignore the truth. Just because we’re safe in our gilded box, doesn’t mean the rest of the world isn’t going through a war. Monad’s people are still being subjugated by a petty tyrant who follows a baseless religion. A religion he uses as an excuse to enslave and exterminate anyone who has mana in their blood. I’ve rested enough. There is work to be done.

He inhaled, clamping his lips shut against a yawn. He stretched his arms until he heard something give a satisfying pop.

“Rrrrrrrrr…”

He tried to wriggle out from the arm that held him. He pushed. He strained with all his might until he felt the blood rise to his face, only to feel the arm tighten slightly around him.

The beast continued to snore: “Rrrrrrr….”

“Barghast,” he whispered.

“Rrrr…”

“Barghast?”

“Rrrrr…”

“BARGHAST!” he screamed as loud as he could. His voice sounded like the hoarse crack of a gun.

Before he could prepare himself he was launched off the bed, into the air. The spider in the rafters spinning her web, making a new home in his new home, raced past him a blur. The wooden floorboards raced up to meet him just as he heard a startled, “Twin o’rre?”

He braced himself for impact. An impact that never came. Instead of hitting the ground he felt large paws grab a hold of him and pull him back onto the feather mattress. He breathed a sigh of relief. He felt a large cool snout nuzzle up against the side of his face.

“My beloved!” a deep voice whined. “I am so sorry…Are you okay?”

The practitioner turned to face his companion. “I’m alright.” He sifted his fingers through the lycan’s fur, staring into those golden eyes that were so much like the sun itself. Eyes that always looked at him with wonder and love. He felt his own heart swell. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this way. To feel so happy it almost hurts. For my heart to be so full of love it feels as if it might burst from my chest and fall to the floor, still beating.

Barghast looked out the window, sniffing the air. He looked back at the practitioner a bit guiltily. “How long have you been awake?”

“Only a minute or two. Not long.” Resting his hand on the Okanavian’s muzzle, Crowe pressed a gentle kiss to the cool snout only to feel a wide, spade-shape tongue lap over his face. This time he was prepared for the onslaught of heat and drool that made his skin glimmer and knew to close his eyes.

“You must think I’ve become a lazy, fat lycan the way I lay about.” Again that look of weariness and hope reminded Crowe that even though Barghast was a century older than he, he was still only a pup. Even in age we are virtually the same.

“Why? Because your belly’s gotten rounder since we got here?” To prove this he patted Barghast’s muscular but now visibly rounder belly affectionately.

The barbarian’s ears twitched. Something mischievous and playful entered his amber eyes. “Are you saying I’m fat?”

Crowe tried to hold back a laugh and failed. “Not at all. It just means you’re eating well. That’s a good thing. We’re in a place where we have everything we need. Food and water. Clothes. We haven’t always had those things.” His heart twinged with a different kind of ache. The ache of fear. The ache of the challenges they would face again once they left the safety of Caldreath.

Enjoy while it lasts.

He shoved the thought away. Today we are undaunted.

Again he ran his fingers along the length of the lycan’s muzzle. Barghast closed his eyes, encouraging the herald to continue with a pleasurable rumble without words.

When Crowe stopped, Barghast looked at him the way a child looks at a parent when they’re about to ask for something. “Can we stay home today? In bed? I could lay here forever…with you and my arms…and never want for anything again.”

The practitioner smiled. He could feel the sadness collecting in the brackets around his mouth like black mold. Despite the pull of reality - the knowledge in the back of his mind that the sense of comfort they felt was false always tucked away somewhere in the back of his mind, hidden, but never entirely forgotten - he continued to stroke the lycan’s fur. “I wish we could. You know nothing would make me happier…I could curl up against your chest in your arms all day and never move…But even things there are things we must do. Things we don’t want to do.”

Barghast pressed his ears back with an unhappy grunt. “I understand,” he conceded reluctantly after a moment. “What must we do today?”

“Well later today I have to meet with Loras…”

“Ah, the bitch…”

“Barghast, that's not nice. You shouldn't call her that.”

“But that's what they call her. The Bitch of Caldreath. You said so herself.”

“But that's not what I call her and that's not how you mean it. You call her that because you don't like her. Because you don't trust her. And you're right not to. It also doesn't change the facts.”

Barghast frowned. “What are the facts?”

Crowe took a deep breath. Why was his heart racing all the sudden? “We need her.”

The Okanavian gnashed his teeth together, his jaw giving a bony clack. “We do not need her…”

The practitioner closed his eyes, willing himself to remain calm. Things are going good between us. I don't want to argue like we did when we first came here, he reminded himself. “I can't have this conversation again. I can't do this on my own anymore. We can't. Sure, you and I survived on the road together, but that's all we did. Survive. I want to have a life. I've never been able to have one before. Look around you. Look at what we have. It's more than I’ve ever had before. And I have it with you. So can't we just enjoy it for a little bit? Because it will all be gone in the blink of an eye.”

“You say you need her as if you're weak I'm…”

“I’m not weak, I’m tired. And I may be the herald of Monad,” Crowe spat derisively, “but I am not infallible. No matter how much you might think so.” He rose to his feet with a scowl, pulling his robe from the back of the bedroom door. “Now, enough of this conversation. I want to bathe in the river and have some breakfast before I meet with the commander. Doesn't that sound nice to you?”

“It does,” Barghast agreed. His belly concurred with an audible growl.

“Shall we go?”

                           …

Barghast followed Crowe towards the edge of town, towards the woods. Not the evil woods they had passed through before - this wood was a nice normal wood that had no desire to kill you. Already the town was awake and alive. Men and women bustled up the street; tendrils of gray smoke rose out of chimneys, making the air smell pleasantly of burnt wood.

New houses were sprouting out of the ground like weeds, in various stages of construction. Some were little more than frames while others simply needed inhabitants to fill them. Over the month they’d been here - Crowe said it had been four weeks when the lycan asked - more people had trickled into Caldreath, a village that had grown into a town. Those who were welcomed, were welcomed with open arms, open smiles, and happy cheers; those were not…Barghast chose not to think of their journey towards the aether grove on their first night. It was to macbre of a sight for him. Still, when he looked at the new homes, the Okanavian felt a cold chill crawl up his spine. A chill that made his hackles rise and a whine escape him. Fortunately Crowe was lost in his own thoughts and had not heard him.

More and more people keep coming to this town. It keeps growing. Growing into what?

His belly growled again. Crowe grinned at him over his shoulder. A sweet grin that revealed itself more and more each day, it seemed. Barghast swatted him playfully on his rump with his tail. That smile took him back to their conversation only moments ago: I'm not weak, his beloved had said, I’m tired.

Barghast listened to the peals of laughter and chatter dropping behind them as they drew closer to the woods. People were happy here. They had what they needed. They were safe. If the barbarian were honest with himself - stubborn, foolish pup! - he could not say he was unhappy. The food alone, the unending amount of it, was worth staying.

They passed the sign that said WELCOME TO CALDREATH. POPULATION: 600.

Another stir of uneasiness quickly ignored.

Sometimes later he swam along the bottom of a river, cutting through the water. He no longer feared the water for his beloved had taught him how to swim. Now he could collect and feast on fish - tiny little creatures with silver-green scales. A small school of them shot away from him in a feeble attempt at escape, but Barghast was a far better swimmer than they. He clamped his jaw over a large one (his twin o’rre had called it a “bass”) sinking his teeth into its scaly flesh. The taste of blood washed over his tongue. Clouds of red bloomed in the water.

When he surfaced, the fish was still squirming in his mouth, its tail flapping in desperation, splashing him with beads of water. He seized it in his paw and tore it in two. He swallowed the bottom half in a single gulp.

Once he’d satiated his hunger for the time being, he returned to the banks. There he found the most pleasing, most beautiful sight: Crowe was stretched out on a towel, completely naked. When the lycan’s shadow washed over him, his beloved smiled at him.

“You are a sight to behold, twin o’rre.”

“So are you.” Crowe scooted over. He patted the ground beside him.

Barghast sat down.

Crowe leaned forward, his lips puckered for a kiss. He stopped. He winced.

“Twin o’rre?” the barbarian whined. His heart gave a nervous jerk.

The practitioner giggled. “Have you been eating fish?”

“Yes.”

“I can tell.”

“Does my breath stink?”

His beloved nodded with another giggle. He dropped a kiss on the Okanavian’s snout. “But that's alright…I love you, stinky breath and all.”

                  …

Crowe left the house at noon, feeling guilty. Barghast had insisted on going with him to the meeting, but Crowe had made his own insistence that the lycan stay.

“I won't be gone long. It will only be a few hours.”

“A few hours is a few hours too long.”

“You hate the meetings! You stand in the corner and skulk the whole time. Nothing is going to happen between now and then. I'll come back and we can come here. But for now I need to stay.”

Now as he stopped at the bottom of the flagstone steps, the guilt made his stomach flutter with black butterflies. He imagined Barghast standing at the window. Watching for him. Waiting for him like a dog waiting for him to come home.

Before the thought could haunt him further, he thought, This is how things have to be done. It's not just the two of us anymore. It can't just be the two of us…Because this war is bigger than the both of us. It's certainly bigger than me. The herald, indeed. More like a foolish farm boy who's in over his head. And to think Bennett and I used to trample and stomp through the woods, pretending we were chasing down torchcoats, rebels for the cause. If we’d known the truth of how things would be, we never would have gotten out of bed.

The butterflies stopped fluttering but the guilt was still there.

“Are you going to go in or are you just going to just stand there?” a voice said behind him.

Crowe felt his heels leave the ground. Reaching for his rod, he whirled around only to come face to face with Rake.

The man smiled at him. “You're still so jumpy, herald. Just like a cat.”

“You're the cat. You have a way of sneaking up on people and starting them when you shouldn't.”

“And you have no sense of humor.”

You didn't either, Crowe thought with a frown he kept tucked in the inside. Not until you came here. What changed? What did this place give you that you didn't have before?

“You nervous about the meeting with the lady?” Just when the practitioner had thought the cynical man he’d met in Timberford had gone, the old Rake returned with a shrewd but knowing look.

“Not at all.”

Rake gave him a look that said he wasn't convinced.

Crowe was not prepared to be cross-examined. He already had the feeling Gyrell had a way of seeing right through him to his core. It’s like she knows what I’m feeling before I do. He chose to turn the tables on Rake for a change. “Doesn't she you?”

“Of course.” Rake leaned forward, casting a cautious gaze in the direction of the crystal glass windows. “She's an intense lass. They don't call her the bitch of Caldreath for nothing.”

Crowe had to press the back of his hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh. They mounted the steps. As they drew closer to the dark oak double doors, Crowe could feel the threat of a familiar dark shadow approaching him. The dark shadow of memory. His steps slowed. He looked at the window closest to his line of sight. The window showed Monad soaring above the monolithic towers of Metropolis. He held a staff in his hand that slowly uncoiled into a snake with a lion’s head; the snake wrapped around his shoulders like a hank of rope, lion’s maw open in a snarl of warning. Below him his people stood in the labyrinthine streets, reaching up for him with hopeful hands, their faces sheened with tears of desperation.

Rake kept walking, now oblivious that the sorcerer had come to a complete stop, his face pale. Crowe was grateful the man didn’t see him in shudder.

You’re not in your hometown anymore, he thought. You’re no longer the black sheep who didn’t belong. The tables have turned.

The doors to the church creaked open. The perfume of incense and susurated prayers wafted out. The candlelight within the chapel beckoned them inside. The church pews were full with people who sat with their heads bowed in prayer. Some of them wept; others chuckled with a hint of hysteria; many simply offered their prayers to Monad in silence, their faces hollowed out by candlelight, shadow, and malnutrition. New refugees who had made the trek past the Wraith - the Mother’s second form - and the purgatorial forest that protected Caldreath from unwanted intruders. Soon they would be inducted into their new homes.

Another quiver raced up Crowe’s spine. His eyes remained focused on the statue in front of the altar. There was Monad again, with the Lion-Headed snake wrapped around his cloaked shoulders. His eyes were cast downward in a look of benevolence, his palms outstretched, long fingers bent towards the ceiling where daylight streamed through the oculus. But it was not a statue Crowe saw. It was Petras. Petras’ face. The face he would one day grow into many, many years from now - if I survive that long, he thought. It was himself he saw standing before the altar. And he had many times.

He expected the refugees to lift their heads. To stare at him accusingly. To point at him and declare him for the liar he was. You don’t belong here, they would say. You belong in the house on top of the hill with your master. With the madman. It was what the people of Annesville had told him. It was what the preacher had told him all those years ago when he’d tried to go to the service with Bennett. They’d only gone once and never tried to go back.

We ran from the church, giggling like the little fools we were. But I was giggling on the outside, not the inside. Inside there was this plummeting sensation. I couldn’t understand why they hated me so. But I’m not in that wicked little town anymore. I’m hundreds of a miles away. Bennett is gone or dead. I will never see him again. For all I know that town has been burned down to the ground…

A wicked voice in the back of his mind told him towns could come back; they could sprout out of the ground, resurrected by the will of Architects. He shoved the thought away. I hope it’s gone. I hope it’s nothing more than a pile of ash. Annesville was never my home.

Someone cleared their throat, yanking him from his thoughts. He felt something within him twitch, already preparing himself for conflict.

Dark brown eyes glared at Rake and he from a broad face. The man who stood before them was tall. Taller than the both of him. Once he would have been broad, more imposing, but the journey here had whittled him down to someone desperate and hungry. Crowe felt himself relax. This man was little different from the men and women who had first come here. He’s harmless.

“We have been sitting here for hours, waiting!” the man huffed. His voice was deep and hoarse with thirst, his eyes red and puffy from fatigue.

It was not Crowe he spoke to, but Rake. He thinks Rake’s in charge. Crowe wished fervently this was the case.

“We are starving…hungry. We have children with us. Who’s in charge around here? How can you just leave us to sit around here like this? How…?” Before he could finish, he sighed. His shoulders slouched in defeat. Crowe felt all the fight drain out of him

Rake leaned back on his heels. He looked at the herald with an arched eyebrow as if to say, You're the man not I.

Monad, help me…I hate being the herald, the sorcerer thought with a grimace. A grimace that he hid before the glaring man took notice. He tried to affect a look of benignity that reflected the marble countenance of his Prime predecessor. “I apologize that you have waited so long after such a disastrous journey.” When the man swung his gaze on him with renewed fury, Crowe rooted himself against the urge to step back.

Before he could finish the slapdash speech he’d prepared on the spot, the man cut him off by holding up a broad but shaky hand. “I don't want to hear it from the mouth of a child, I want to talk to the herald of Monad…”

“I am the herald of Monad!” Crowe snarled through gritted teeth.

His words thundered through the chapel like a gunshot, extinguishing whispered prayers and the muffled sobs of hungry children.

The man gawked at him, his jaw clenched. After several seconds he made an indignant sputtering sound. “You can't…You can't be the herald. You're just a boy.”

“Don't worry mate,” Rake sniffed, his jaw slack as if he were bored - the light dancing mischievously in his eyes said otherwise. “I felt pretty much the same way you do the first time I met this little shit.” He locked his head in Crowe’s direction with a lazy roll of his eyes. “I said to myself, ‘How is this squirt supposed to stand up to the likes of Drajen?’ But I’ve seen him in action…” When he looked at the practitioner, Crowe could see the respect he heard in his voice was not just for show. “...and if it wasn't for him I wouldn't be here.”

Crowe and the man gawked at him. Gaining his composure, the practitioner said, “We are preparing a feast for you tonight. There will be food and drink and aether wine and you will have quarters to sleep in tonight. But know that this is a place of order, not a place of chaos, and we have a way of doing things. Do you understand?”

The man nodded slowly. His dirt-streaked cheeks darkened even further with embarrassment. The herald offered his hand and told him his name. The man shook it and told him his name was Cador.

A few awkward moments later, the church at the top of the tower clanged, signifying the top of the hour. Crowe and Barghast made their way up the spiral steps - a spiral that had become very familiar to Crowe over the passing of days, weeks.

Crowe and Rake stopped outside a door made of dark wood. Crowe always felt a strange sense of discomfort when he saw the door. A discomfort with no name. Perhaps it's the fact there are literal ghosts inside. They talk and walk and feel like people, but they don't know the truth. They don't know they're dead. They don't know they're not real people.

Thank Monad he wasn't the only one. Rake shivered visibly as he raised a fist towards the door.

Before he could knock, the door swung open with an audible creak that made Crowe think of dying cats. Jalif appeared, both happy and healthy looking. His face broke open in delight, his dark eyes brightening. “Crowe, Rake, right on time as usual…!”

As he was clapped heartily on the back, the practitioner realized that the ghost had called them both by their names. This is new. He couldn't remember who I was before. Neither of us. Now he can remember. As if he's becoming more…alive. The practitioner wondered if this had something to do with Caldreath’s growing population. With every new lost soul inducted into the fold, another house was built; with each new house, with each new street the town slowly grew larger.

Another thought he didn't want to think about.

Jalif led them into the apartment; his pointless chattering had ceased for the time being. He led them down a hallway where the voice of a young child could be heard singing: “I’m goin’, goin’ up to the white streets of the Eternal City where I belonggg…” They passed a doorway where the source of the voice could be seen playing with dolls, throwing distorted puppet shadows on the wall by candlelight; the drapes had been drawn over the windows. As they passed a pair of bright blue eyes shot up to glance at Crowe and Rake before the owner returned back to her play.

Crowe was glad to be past the doorway; it was strange to see a ghost playing with dolls.

Jalif let them into the study. Loras sat at a large oak table, a quill in hand, bent absorbedly over a scroll of parchment. Jalif laid something down next to her: a steaming mug of tea. She looked up long enough to smile at her ghost of a husband. Long enough to brush her fingers across the palm of his hand. Long enough for Crowe to catch a glimpse of the woman she had been before Caldreath became a ghost town.

“Can I get you anything else, my dear? Have you eaten?”

“No, Jalif, I’m alright. Don't give me that look. You know I’ll get up and eat in a moment. A piece of buttered bread, perhaps. I have to finish writing this speech for tonight's dinner.” With this Loras bent back over the parchment as if Crowe and Rake were simply a part of the room, inconsequential to her.

Jalif left the room. Crowe felt his muscles relax but not all the way. He resisted the urge to clear his throat. Gyrell would take as long as she pleased and not a damned second less.

When she did look up it felt as if several minutes had passed by. It was not at Rake she looked at, it was Crowe. He felt that strange minute flutter of eagerness he hated so much. Eagerness for what? Gaining her approval? How could he gain her approval when it was impossible to truly achieve? She was far more experienced than he - and for the time being maybe even more powerful. This is her world, not mine, and we are all subject to it.

“We have much to do today,” she told him.

                  …

Much to do today, indeed. Each minute passed by with deliberate slowness. The refugees needed to be blessed by drinking aether wine from a chalice. As herald it was his job to do the blessing. After they drank from the chalice, he said the right words and made the right gestures: “May you find splendor in the Eternal City…”

He hated everything about this ritual. He hated the words. He hated the gestures. I’m not a priest…I’m not your savior…But more than anything he hated the way the refugees looked at him as if he were salvation itself.

After the ceremony was over, the new villagers had feasted and been shown to their new homes, Crowe and Rake returned to Gyrell’s study. The commander did not look happy.

“I hear news from the refugees that Drajen is on the march.” She glanced sharply at Crowe as if to say This is all your fault. She paced back and forth, wearing her battle greaves. Preparing for a battle perhaps. And yet she had flung this statement out casually - not with the fright or anger or even the distress such a statement deserved; so casually the sorcerer was not sure if he'd heard her correctly.

“Pope Drajen…?” Rake began.

“Yes!” Gyrell's head snapped up, bird-like and boneless. The words Yes, you fool, that's exactly what I said would be carved into bleeding red letters if words could be shaped by looks alone. “He marches to Caldreath with an army following behind him…an army that could flatten this town in moments!” She laughed, a raucous sharp sound that made her seem more birdlike than ever. “It will be weeks before he gets here, but it is a sure thing!”

“Damn us all to the Void!” Rake gasped. He sounded like a man who’d had all the breath crushed from his lungs by a blow to the stomach. “We’re all fucked!” All the blood drained from his face. He looked more frightened than the practitioner had ever seen him before. Even after their encounter with the possessed Lagerof in the temple in Timberford. The practitioner couldn't blame him. Knots of dread coiled inside the sorcerer's stomach.

Gyrell did not look frightened at all. She smiled at him - the smile of a woman who not only knows what will happen, but of someone who already knows victory is at hand. “Where is your cantankerous spirit, Mr. Rake? Homesteading has made you complacent. May I remind you we have the high ground. Look at where we are.” She marched around the desk, stopping at a set of double doors. She threw back the drapes before throwing them open. Light exploded into the room, chasing away the shadows. She stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked the town. Crowe stepped out with her. Rake did not. He still had the cowardly look of a beaten dog.

“You’re not worried?” Crowe asked Loras.

She grinned at him. Something knowing gleamed in her green eyes. “Do you think I’d tell you if I was?”

“If you can’t tell me then who can you tell? You need someone to talk to.”

“While his time here has made Rake fat and complacent, your time here has made you bold. I had your doubts.”

“I’ve seen what will happen if I fail.”

She continued to smile, but Crowe did not miss the twitch of a muscle above one eyebrow. “Have you? What have you seen?”

“I saw something in a vision. While I tend to take visions with a grain of salt this one was all too real to be taken lightly. So I’m taking this seriously.”

“And you’re not going to tell me what you saw in this vision?”

Now it was Crowe’s turn to smirk. “Once you show me all your cards, I’ll show you all mine. But I know you won’t, so I won’t get on my knees and beg. We all have secrets. And secrets are power. If I tell you my secrets, I give you power over me. Same if you tell me yours. So you and I will just continue this dance. Right?”

Her grin widened into something more genuine. “Your time here has made you bold, indeed. You’ll make a fine leader. When Drajen comes you must be prepared to lead these people into battle. It is your destiny. They will follow you into battle. Before they were lost cattle without a shepherd to guide them. Now they have had a taste of what hope is like. They will fight for it like savage animals. You must be the hand that drives the blade into Drajen’s heart.”

Crowe swallowed, his mouth tasting of steel. “I will do what it takes to end this war once and for all.”