Eternity Calls

Snow silken slopes passed me by slowly as the day sank in. The path to Remire was most treacherous; any slip, any fall or mistake could be a man’s last. Ahead of me, a rockfall had struck at some point previously. Patches of blood were frozen into the track and compacted under the stones. I dismounted from my horse on her left-hand side, the side closer to the edge of death with hell awaiting a hundred feet below. Swift, my steed, was indeed a trusty and fine animal. She could stare down a hundred men in battle and not even begin to spook, but her reservation came at many a time, unexpected. So, I was careful to shield her from the sheer drop only metres away. My eyes followed where the rocks had fallen, their flight and collision and then I came to the grizzly sight of a battered body, splayed out like frozen rose petals, with the thorns of his bones taunting my fate. He belonged to the Baron, a nameless son, dead for a war not yet begun.  

Below me in the valley, black birds flew. I was hungry, so I raised my hand high and greeted them. They were surprised, no doubt, to find a two-legged pig worthy of their intellect. They circled in the air, cawing to each other, profanities, I’m sure. The murder’s leader landed on my arm. He was a large crow, grown fat from his mountain plunder. His midnight plumage had streaks of snow-white; they were the marks of his violent ascension to his throne. To this crow, I spoke, through my mind and thoughts. I told him of my hunger, and he croaked back to me, shocked at the spectacle of a man able to communicate with him. He told me that he thought we were all equally dead in the brain. To my question, his response was sly. I already had food he told me, arching his head cruelly to my horse. When I told him that I needed the horse to get to Remire, he seemed to be slightly more understanding. I did, however, have to warn the crow that I would not touch a scrap of the broken body below, before he leapt from my arm, gliding back down into the valley. 

Since I can first remember, I had been drawn to crows and other black birds, and equally, they seemed to be drawn to me. My particular affinity with these birds was unnatural, and many scholars of the arcane had revelled at my ability to communicate with them. I had been told that others in the world could talk with beasts as I did. Crows, however, were different to most creatures, for their trickster brethren had a way with words that could sully even the Emperor’s jester, once shameless, into folly. Often, I would call for these birds in times of great need or perhaps even isolation. Most of them were difficult and blunt, but they all seemed to share a certain corvid charm, that I ardently admired.  

From the sky, something fell. It was shadow struck by the sun, before it hissed past my face and landed cruelly at my feet, dead. The fresh kill meandered itself into an ‘S’ shape. Its scale armour had done nothing to save its soul. It was a serpent – a snake. This crow had a sense of humour too; I heard him cackle amongst his brethren, fleeing back into the valley. My stomach pained and trembled. A snake would have to do. 

Remire was nearing. I could feel it in my bones and my flesh; a faint flicker of belonging danced through me. Then came the beautiful concoction, the smell of city smoke, infused in the chilled mountain air. My horse trotted around the cliff’s bend; I leant to the side in anticipation, waiting for the rock wall to turn away from itself. Then I looked, and I saw the seat of the mountain King – Remire. Behold – the oldest kingdom of all the land. Behold – the fountain of my bloodline. Behold – the birthplace of man. A thousand homes of decent folk hugged the valley close. The ring of mountains spoke a tale of an ancient covenant between these people and nature, set in stone for years gone and forevermore to come. Through the only break in the ring, spilt a lake which stretched for miles across a vast plateau. The lake was deep, unfathomably so. Some say it even reached Eternity itself. In Midheart, we did not bury our dead; we let them swim in the Lake. Beyond the water was a drop to the rolling lands of the north. Remire’s back was ever turned on the Golden Isle. Even when the Empire was in good graces with our kingdom, we never forgot our past, our heritage, our place as the rightful rulers of man. Midheart was always the weakest part of the Imperial chain, and now with the Empire fallen into tyranny, we would be the first to break away.  

Five months had passed since I had last seen Remire; it had been too long. The guards atop the old wall stared at me as I made my way down the forested path that had haunted me as a scared child on that sad day. I heard one of the men cry to those below; the city’s gates were opened to me. I passed into the city. The streets were alive; they were wild. People worked, and children played. The roar of a blacksmith’s forge and the toll of temple bells serenaded the city scene. The buildings of wood, stone and terracotta tiles were orderly disordered, elevated and dipped, laid to fit with the rugged land. Patches of woodland sprouted across the city, like seeds from a wind-blown flower; that was likely the work of my brother’s Queen and our mother. Those two made a powerful alliance in a city that had lived by war for so long.  

I dismounted my horse and led her to a creek. She drank as if she were an empty flask, submerged; she had done well this journey. From the corner of my eyes, I saw a young boy come running to me. He was from the Keep’s stables; I recognised his attire. By the time he had reached me, he seemed exhausted, and his feet suddenly faltered. His body flung itself into and under my horse, and Swift reared upwards. All time slowed down. Her heavy hooves were soon to be unknowing bone-crushing blades to the boy who was now directly beneath her – disaster. My instincts kicked in, my dark blood. Eyes shut, I darted forwards and grappled the child. We rolled, and I tried to shield him, waiting for the blow. Yet then a familiar silent scream echoed behind me and my perception of time returned. Nothing came to hit us. I opened my eyes, and to my surprise, I found myself on the other side of the creek. The boy was in my arms. 

“Are you alright?” I asked him as I pulled him onto his feet. He looked around, confused; he saw my horse across the water.  

“What? How – how? I was just over there,” he breathed. 

It’s called shadow stepping; I can use it to travel short distances.” 

“Like a portal?” He said with his mouth wide open. 

“Like that!” I smiled before the boy took a step back and let out a stifled gasp of pain. “Your leg is hurt.” 

“It’s nothing.” He turned away, and I sensed that it was an injury unrelated to the present incident. 

I whistled for my horse, and she soon came trotting over the rickety bridge, that had sat over the gentle river for longer than I cared to remember. “Come, I’ll give you a ride,” I said as I mounted up. I lifted the boy onto the horse that had almost been his fate, and he sat atop Swift with a kind of confident unease, for he was sure of horses, just not this one. 

He had brown hair that reached down to his eyes, and his height must have marked him at around twelve years. I steered Swift back onto the path; the boy was in front of me. We rode just as I had with Arangar all those years ago and slowly a feeling that had followed me for all of my life came to torment me once more; it was the feeling of homesickness or even homelessness, for I did not know where I truly belonged. Were my brothers in arms more important than my brother in blood? I had been raised as a weapon; I was an assassin. In my father’s eyes, that was the best use of my connection to the darkness, but my father was just a man; my only purpose was given to me by a man, and although a great man he was, a writer of destiny he was not. There had to be something more for me to do in this life than simply kill.  

My mind, set loose, had been caught once more as the boy spoke to me. “The stablemaster, Garik, sent me to get you.” 

“Garik? Who’s Garik. What happened to Vance?” 

The boy hesitated for a moment before he spoke with a slow and sorrowful tongue, “Vance was killed, just over three months ago…” 

A breath escaped from me. Vance was the same age as my brother; they used to play together. I knew him as a man also. He had a way with the horses and also the children that worked alongside him, for he had many a time told me that he had never grown up. “I’m sorry to hear that,” I said softly. “I knew him; he was a friend of mine.” The boy did not speak for a while. I heard him sniff quietly.  

“Garik, isn’t like Vance was. He is angry. He scares me. Sometimes he hits me, and the horses, and no matter how much I plead for him to stop…” the boy trailed off into silence. “Please don’t tell him I said this.” I heard pure terror in his words, and I could feel his anxiety before me. I felt confused as to how my brother could allow such a man to hold a position in his court, yet I could not forget that this boy was just a child; I would have to go and inspect this new stable master for myself.  

Inside the outer courtyard’s walls, the Keep towered above us. The stables were just to the left as they had always been, yet the angry shouts of an imposter were like cracks in this otherwise perfect memory mirror of the past. I got off Swift and lifted the boy down to the dusty and straw strewn ground. Reluctantly, I led my horse into the once homily, now den-like abode of this, Garik. The man heard me but sniffed over-loudly, almost as if he wanted me to think that he had been able to smell me coming. He spun around and held his hands close to his chest, crookedly. In truth, he had the appearance of a gremlin; I had had to kill many of them in the southern mountain passes. Garik dragged himself over to me. I turned quickly to see the boy watching nervously from the furthest corner, finding comfort in comforting a young horse who seemed to share his fear. “Oi, I’ve been waiting for you. What’s taken you so long?” The man growled to me in a thick and hostile dialect. He started pointing his grimy claw-tipped fingers over my shoulder. “And you, boy, wherein the bloody hell have you been. I tell you to go and fetch this bugger…” I held up my hand to silence him. “Hey, what do you think…” 

“SILENCE” I roared, and silence came. “Do you know who I am?” 

“Well – w – well, you the bastard, ain’t ya? That got exiled from the kingdom.”  

“I go by many names, Stableman.” I paused for a moment. “Commander of the Iron Scouts, Leer of Midheart, The Black Baron, but ‘bastard’ is not one of them.” I saw the grim features of his face divulge into those of fear and panic. He started to back away and whimper; I wonder which of these names he feared the most.  

“The Black Baron,” he tried to breathe. “You – you killed my King, in his very bed-chamber…” 

“And then I killed another on the battlefield, later that day. You can blame everything that happened to your King, in his bed-chamber, on your fool of an Emperor. With war comes drastic measures and dastardly deeds, but no more so than what that maniacal mad man did – conspiring with a dragon, despicable.”  

Nightmares from the past returned to torment me, and a dark mist of rage started to suffocate my mind and vision. The wretched man started to pipe up again. “Well, you see. Here’s the thing, mate. OUR Emperor won the war; he wears the crown, sits on the Golden Throne. What are you going to do? Butcher me too?” the fool laughed, his face half scared, half assertive.  

I returned his laugh with a single humourless breath. I turned back to the boy. “Leave us! Close the door behind you.” The boy stared at me for a while before he reluctantly nodded and left the horse he was tending. I looked back to the man; I saw the plain confusion in him. Then came the heavy swing of the stable door shut and we descended into a dim candlelit despair. A yellow glow shone on his face, casting a shadow-scape of trench-like wrinkles. I took a step closer to him; he took two back. “Garik, why are you here? You’re a long way from home. Your imperialism has never been welcome here, save by the Temple.” The man remained silent. “The King gave you this position did he, most intriguing.” 

“He said that I am irreplaceable, ‘never seen a man stable horses like him before,’ that’s what he said!” 

“Maybe I shan’t kill you after all then, lest I go against the better judgement of my brother.” I bared my teeth in a smile. “But I am not my brother, am I?” Suddenly, I let the darkness take hold, and I felt myself change, transform. My eyes turned black as night, yet I saw clear as day. They locked onto the stablemaster and started to leech him of his strength and ego and power. He gasped, struggling for air. The pathetic man dropped to his knees, pleading for me to look away, for he himself, could not take his eyes from mine. This was my leer, for which my mother named me. It had the potential to undo a man. In death, the soul remains, yet with living fear, it could shatter and break. A puddle of urine appeared on the floor. “You are not to go near my horse; the boy will look after her. Is that understood?” 

“Yes,” he gasped. 

Before I reached the door, I turned back to the stablemaster. “And if you so much as touch either of them, then I will return you to your King.” 

The day was in its prime. The sun beat down, flooding into the stable and relinquishing me of my anger. To the boy, I gave him his duties and the trust of my steed. Any further misdeeds of the stablemaster were to be made known to me. As for myself, the time had come, the time to greet my brother and the grim happenings in Remire. 

I marched to the Keep, which had only become stronger and more imposing with age. Centuries of reinforcement had preserved the millennia-spanning stone that had seen every year of man. Yet these walls had protected more than just the kingdom, even under the Imperial threat; they had protected a name. The name that was once denied to me now called me back, under the whispering breaths of Kings since fallen, from the lake, “Delach.”  

The grand door at the top of the steps gave way to a magnificently humble interior; only a red and gold embroidered carpet stretched across the length of the hall, yet all else was decorated only by the proud stone that had stood forever before. The old architecture of the Keep still reflected the values of Midheart to this day. The entire Keep was built around the single largest and grandest room, which sat at the end of the hall, the War Room. I would find my brother there. I used to envy the fact that he was raised in that room, learning about the art of war and rule from our father. However, as I became older, I realised that Laerka was the one who had always longed to be me, riding with the Iron Scouts and skirmishing on treacherous mountain passes. Yet, he knew not of the more macabre side of my training. That was until he had to witness me, first hand, in the Birthright War. We fought alongside each other just as Arangar had once foretold. He fought like a prince; I fought like an assassin. On the battlefield, our brotherhood was reborn, and we found each other anew. We became fast friends and allies. We learnt to fight as one, and by the time the war was in its prime, we had become an unstoppable force, a duumvirate of chaos. My father, however, even after seeing me fight did not consider me his prince, only his rather formidable creation. His love for me grew like a single spark in a damp pile of kindling. Yet, the fires of war did eventually manage to rekindle his lost love, and he did slowly begin to see me as his son, and he started to view my feats in battle as mine and not his own. Deep down, I had always wanted to make that man proud, to show him that I was worthy of his affection. On the day that two Kings fell to my blade, one in silence and the other in fury, my father was truly proud. A golden week of glorious battle endured after that. My father fought alongside his two sons, all united under the name, Delach, rulers of Midheart and the battlefield. Our family was whole again; it did not last. Our father was ripped away in the final battle, devoured by a beast most vile. That was the killing blow, for us all, and the loss of a Delach proved too much bear; it was fear itself. On that day, our hearts stopped, and we could do nothing more but watch the slaughter.  

Guards greeted me as I approached the War Room; their spears that raised for no one, raised for me. The man on the left shouted, “Sir,” whilst the other tapped his spear twice on the ground. The arched oak door suddenly opened from the inside and the barricade it had provided disappeared, releasing a flood of important noise and planned chaos. Dozens of men were joined in groups scattered around the room; some studied maps, some tested weapons and armour, whilst a few strategists simply planned and pondered. It was busy and busy meant that something dark was coming. I walked into the room, a few steps, and everything slowed down; everyone stopped. It was like a deep breath had been taken. All those who fought in the Birthright War knew me well. Most in the room knew of me from talk amongst the lords. They knew me as the King’s brother and not the prince. The latter was an option that I had once longed for, not anymore. My brother had been trying to make me take back my title ever since our father died. I always refused him.  

Soon, the War Room released its breath, and I quickly became lost in the hive of people. At the top of the room sat a throne; it was the same one that should have been sitting in the throne room. I laughed under my breath; the King had permanently migrated. Suddenly, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder – Laerka. I turned around to see my brother’s stern face. “Leer,” he shouted. “It is good to see you; it has been too long, far too long. Did you get my letter?”  

“It is good to see you brother.” Laerka waved his hand, motioning for us to walk, and we made our way out of the room and down the hall. “I got your letter, indeed, but the Baron that you had written about showed up just after.” 

“Baron Grail,” my brother sneered. “The Emperor’s golden boy. He passed by Remire on the night after the murder, before announcing to me that he had some grave business to attend to with my brother, yet in between the ‘treason’ and the ‘enemy of the Empire’ he would not speak what of.” Laerka brushed his short beard in thought, as we left the Keep and headed into the courtyard. “Well, I know that in this patchwork of an Empire, there are no coincidences. He came to arrest you for the murder; I was correct in my assumption, was I?” I nodded slowly, and I felt a small embarrassed grin creep onto my face. Laerka looked serious, however. “They want you out of the equation,” he breathed. “They are preparing to attack!” 

“If that is true, brother, then they will need to prepare indeed. Remire has never fallen; it is not possible without inside help. A thousand mountains protect the kingdom, and the capital ring renders the city nigh upon invincible. No army can take us. A siege is impossible; the lake provides. The only way is to cripple us from the inside.” Laerka nodded slowly in agreement. We were now in the city, walking down to the waterfront. “That would explain why they want me gone, brother.” 

“Go on,” he implored. 

“My art is not only in killing, but also in conspiracy; the two go hand in hand. If the only way for the Emperor to take the city is from the inside, then he knows that I am the only one who can out conspire him. I am his greatest threat.” 

My brother held his chin before moving his hand up to his forehead. “Leer, you are right,” he sighed. “There have been strange happenings lately, murders and not just the last; there have been more, often without reason. Damn the lake! We should have been paying more attention. For weeks my strategists have been looking for ways of attack, flaws in our defences. Not for a moment did we think that a war could start like this. I see why they would want you out of the picture, brother, for you have already painted an image clearer than most.” Laerka looked supremely troubled now. “I felt it before, and I feel it now, something dark is stirring beneath the water.” 

The ancient lake stretched out in front of us, as far as the eye could see. A cloud of fog swirled atop its surface and the cold water lapped onto the sand beneath our feet, running from the falling sun, which cast deep shadows of intrigue across the city that my brother and I held dear. Hundreds of lights slowly filled up the streets and houses of Remire. The lights that never came on, however, were the ones to watch out for, as shadows and darkness created a sanctuary for the malcontent; it was the perfect environment for conspiracy to infect and spread like a plague. This was warfare like none other, a cold conflict, that knew not the boundaries of honour and valour. A kingdom trap lay in wait, and anything could set it off. Discovery and disarmament would be in order, lest the city and Midheart fall.