Graeme heaved a gasp that rocked his whole body as the garden returned in an instant, his lungs filling with clean cool air and the scent of the rose bushes. He trembled, his limbs weak and aching as the vision faded and he came back to himself. He would have been flat on the ground, were it not for the arms holding him up.
“Cecila…” he rasped out, clinging to her with one hand. The other was pinned between them.
It was warm.
Cecila’s face was frozen pale, her green eyes wide and trained on him. The dagger was buried up to the glittering hilt in Cecila’s stomach, surrounded by a blossom of dark, hot blood that slicked Graeme’s grip on it.
His hand sprung from the hilt like it had seared him, fawn-legged as he stumbled away and crashed into the garden wall, barely keeping himself upright. Cecila’s arms floated in place, still poised how she had been holding him as she stared at the blood pouring from her belly.
“No,” Graeme breathed. “No, no no no, Cecila, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”
“You… fell…” she mumbled, her throat tight and hiccuping with the twitching of her body. “I wanted… to catch… you…”
Cecila eyes glazed and she dropped to the ground faster than he could move. Graeme scrambled to her side, hands hovering and retracting in his panic, eyes stuck on the gleaming hilt of the dagger. A dark puddle branched out through the mortar of the cobbled path beneath her.
“Cecila,” Graeme beckoned, his voice wavering. He took up one of her hands in both of his and squeezed it tight as he hovered over her. “Cecila, you’re going to be alright, okay? You’re going to be fine. Do you hear me? You have to be alright—”
“Graeme,” she mumbled, breathing in shallow puffs. “I wanted… to tell you…”
“Save your breath,” Graeme hushed. His eyes were filling with tears as he glanced back at the unlit windows of the house. “I’m going to get help. I—the physician, I’ll fetch the physician—”
When Graeme tried to rise Cecila gripped his hand harder, pulling him back to her. She sputtered a cough and a trickle of red spilled from the corner of her mouth.
“Graeme… listen,” she pleaded softly. Her mouth spasmed in a weak smile, her teeth stained pink. “I love you.”
Graeme flinched at the words, his brow winding. “What?”
Cecila tugged Graeme closer and he obliged, unsure what else to do. When he was close enough, she pressed a kiss to his cheek, warm and sticky. The red print of her lips stained his skin.
“Cecila—”
He saw the instant Cecila went still, white-framed gaze cast blindly up to the night sky above. The hilt of the dagger froze in place, no longer shifted by her breath. Graeme stayed knelt at her side, trembling, his hands and cheek painted with her blood.
“Arabeth, please, it’s me—open the door.”
Graeme was still knocking when the door to Arabeth’s quaint thatched cottage behind the smithy swung open. Arabeth stood there in the low hearth light, clad as usual in a brown tunic and a leather apron, ducking to peer down at Graeme through his dark curls hanging like willow branches from the top of the doorframe.
“Graeme,” he said, not greeting or questioning.
Arabeth looked him over, taking quick note of the dark patches on his tunic, the smudge of red on his cheek, and the dagger clutched in his hand. Graeme held his breath. Arabeth stood slowly straighter, his face falling into shadow, but he didn’t back away.
“I need your help,” pleaded Graeme. There were tears cloying his words and cutting lines down his face. “Please let me in.”
Arabeth glanced around at the quiet street before stepping aside and ushering him in, closing the door behind.
“It was an accident,” Graeme babbled before Arabeth could ask. He paced nervously through the room. “It was in my hand when I collapsed and she—I would never wilfully hurt her, you have to believe me—”
“Who?” demanded Arabeth, keeping himself by the door, posed with unease.
Graeme sniffled, tears brewing anew. “A maid, the last of my father’s staff.” He stopped by the hearth, staring into the flickering fire. “I was going to give her the house.”
Arabeth let out a long breath and rubbed at his jaw. He stayed silent.
“No one’s going to believe me,” Graeme hiccuped, collapsing down into a chair and burying his face in his hands, smearing red into his mottled white and brown hair when he pushed it back. “They’ll say it was my mother’s blood at work—nothing but a madwoman’s son. They were all waiting for me to bring some fresh tragedy to this place.”
“I know the feeling,” mumbled Arabeth. He dropped his hands to his sides. “Graeme… whatever help you’re seeking, you won’t find it here. I’m sorry.”
Graeme whipped his head up to look at Arabeth like he was only just becoming aware of his presence in the room. He noticed the smith was hovering next to his small worn-wood table, upon which was a hide bag packed tight. The house around them was tidy and even barer than usual.
“You’re leaving?” asked Graeme, his brow curving. Arabeth shifted stiffly by the door, staring down at the threadbare rugs on the floor by his feet. Graeme looked wounded. “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”
“It was for the better,” insisted Arabeth, the rasp in his voice growing sharper. “It’s more than clear I’m not welcome here.”
Graeme was breathing like a rabbit, eyes flitting quickly about. He stood abruptly and extended the dagger to Arabeth.
“Destroy this,” he insisted. “Before you go. Melt it down in the forge. I want to be rid of it, I want it gone forever.”
Arabeth stood still and silent.
“Take it! Please! Take it from me!”
With slow movements, Arabeth took the hilt from him. He was about to deposit it on the table when he paused, frowning and tilting it into the light.
“Where did you get this?” he mumbled.
“Does it matter?” fumed Graeme. In the pursuing lull, he took a shaky breath and blinked at the smith. “Why?”
“Nothing. Nevermind it.”
Arabeth shook his head and set the dagger down on the table with a gentle clunk.
“Destroying it won’t undo anything done,” he went on, quiet but firm. The fire cast his shadow even taller behind him on the wall. “The maid… what was her name?”
Graeme pressed a hand to his mouth and wept into it. Arabeth set his jaw and let out a long breath.
“Did your father keep horses?”
Graeme’s face pinched with confusion.
“What?” he asked, his voice damp with tears.
“Horses. Do you have any?”
“Uhm—yes, two.”
“Take one and ride far away from here. Forget this place. Start somewhere new.”
With wide eyes, Graeme rubbed at his stained palm and looked from the dagger on the table to Arabeth’s face lit warm gold by the hearth.
“Come with me,” he entreated gently. Arabeth’s brow twitched in a surprised frown. “You’re leaving anyway, aren’t you? I have nothing left. Come with me. We—”
“Shh,” hushed Arabeth, holding up a hand. They both fell silent to listen.
Outside, dozens of feet clomped against the hard-packed dirt beyond the smithy, accompanied by harsh voices. Arabeth hurried to the front window, pushing aside the raggedy curtain. Amber flecks of torches against the blue night were growing larger out on the street. Graeme rushed to smother the fire in the hearth with his boot.
“Is there another way out of here?” urged Graeme, scanning the room. He spotted only two windows and the front door.
Arabeth shook his head, ducking back behind the curtain. “Even if there were, there’s too many out there.”
“They must have found the body and followed me here,” lamented Graeme. He took a deep breath and stood up straighter. “Let me through—”
“Blacksmith!” a man called from outside. He sounded close by. The footsteps halted and the torchlight seeped in around the edge of the door. “We know you’re in there! Reveal yourself! We know what you’ve done to that poor girl, there’s no use hiding!”
Graeme furrowed, turning to look up at Arabeth. His face was set firm and his shoulders were rigid.
“They think it was you,” breathed Graeme. He shook his head. “Why would they think it was you?”
“For the love of the gods, Graeme, look at yourself and look at me!” harshed Arabeth. He closed his eyes for a second and collected himself. “I was never anything but a threat to these people. They were already convinced I was a killer. It was only a matter of time.”
Graeme looked from Arabeth—dressed in the clothes and jewellery he sewed and forged for himself; from the young scar through his eyebrow mixed in with the old that Graeme had accidentally given him the day they met; from the wedding ring that he fiddled with when he was lost in thought—to his own red-stained palms. He felt nauseous.
“I won’t stand for this,” said Graeme, marching to the door. Arabeth intercepted him by shoving the table in front of it. “What are you doing? You have to let me clear your name—”
“They won’t believe you.”
“Arabeth—”
“Trust me.”
Arabeth took up the dagger and pressed it into Graeme’s hand just as the door was tried from the outside. Finding it barricaded, they began banging on it. The crowd outside grew louder.
“They’ll burn this place down with us inside if we don’t go out there,” said Graeme. He fought to keep his breathing level. “We need to get out of here.”
“I’m working on that.” Arabeth hauled his bed and his two chairs to the door and added them to the barricade as the banging continued. “Do you think you could squeeze through there?” He nodded to the second window, set into the northern side of the house.
“Perhaps, but you certainly couldn’t,” replied Graeme.
The dagger in his hand caught his attention again and he stared at it, grip tightening as the door rattled in the frame. More voices erupted from the crowd.
“Break it down!”
“Smoke the giant out!”
“Careful—I’ll bet he’s got Gregor’s boy in there, the wicked creature!”
“Maybe he’s eaten him!”
In the cacophony, a shrill rhythmic tapping came from the north window, crystalline like pixie song. When Graeme looked to it, a large and sleek raven was perched outside on the sill, pecking against the glass. It met his gaze, its small glassy black eyes staring into him, and in its purring chirp he heard more than sound.
“I have an idea,” he said, gravitating to the window.
Arabeth paused as he strapped a sword-belt around his waist. “You do?”
“Give me a moment,” replied Graeme. With a little effort he pushed the window open, and the raven chittered as it stepped closer to him.
“We don’t have a moment!” hastened Arabeth. He drew his sword as the door was rammed, buckling and splintering under the assault. “Graeme!”
The raven leaned in as Graeme whispered to it in a hurried flow of words he barely knew. The next ram of the door rattled his teeth. When he was finished, the raven tilted it’s shiny head, gave a clipped call, and took off, fluttering up above the rooftops of the shops and cottages and melding into the night.
Arabeth looked stunned when Graeme returned to the heart of the room, brandishing the red-edge dagger.
“What are you doing?” he pressed, brow casting deep shadows over his ink-dark eyes.
“Just wait,” assured Graeme, through he couldn’t stop himself from anxiously fidgeting.
“We can’t wait—what in the world are you onto?”
They both flinched as another ram broke one of the hinges off the door. The mob outside cheered. The barricade held, but only just barely. Arabeth glided in front of Graeme, blade held at the ready, animated with the agility of a practiced swordsman. Graeme shrunk back from the barrage of noise, hiding himself in the shadow of Arabeth’s thick arm and clutching the dagger-handle in white-knuckle fingers.
“When I was younger, I could talk to them,” Graeme admitted in a great rush of words. “The ravens. I could ask them to do things, and they would.”
Arabeth huffed a heavy breath and kept his back to him.
“A madwoman’s son indeed,” he mumbled.
The two of them braced for the impact as the rallying cry for the battering ram rose to a discordant crescendo. Graeme could smell the burning oiled rags of the torches and the dry earthy note of split wood from the barely hanging door. He squeezed his eyes shut.
Then there was screaming. Shrieks and calls of surprise, then fear. The door held still.
Torchlights flitted wildly outside the window in harsh arcs, thrown back and forth and some dropped to the dirt. The soundless dark forms of swooping ravens flashed across the windows, diving for the knot of villagers. The shouting unravelled as the gathered began to dart various ways to evade, their voices retreating.
“How—?” Arabeth marvelled, looking back to Graeme, but he was already moving to undo the barricade.
“This is our only chance,” he huffed as he hefted the chairs and tossed them away. “Quickly!”
Arabeth made swift work of the bed and table, shoving them to the side, and kicked the door outward. It swung and collapsed with a loud bang, scattering the villagers on the the other side further from the cottage. As they darted out, Graeme barely avoided swiping his foot through the flame of a fallen torch, his nose filled with hay-smoke as the fire began to spread.
Without a word, Arabeth grabbed his arm and tugged him harshly along behind him as he ran through the parting in the mayhem. Even through the flurry of feathers, bodies, and fire, Arabeth was easy to spot, and some shouted in their wake. He easily cut down a man who stepped in their way with a torch in one hand and a sickle in the other—Graeme recognised him as Isenbrand, a livestock farmer. Arabeth slashed his legs out from under him and left him to a trio of ravens that descended immediately upon his felled form.
Graeme could barely see, lost in the flurry of cobbles, fire, and motion blended indistinct in the blue dark. When they reached the street in front of the smithy, he cast a glance backward and lurched a little at the sight. Dozens of ravens, wingspans as long as his own arms, clouded the gathered folk like flies to a corpse, relentlessly diving, clawing, pecking. They remained silent, only the flutter of their wings under the bellows and clamour of pain and fear.
He saw a villager manage to strike one of the birds with her torch, slamming it to the ground, and Graeme doubled over like the hit had been to his own stomach, breathless. A warbled echo of the woman’s scream blasted from the raven’s beak before she struck it again, and in an instant it bloomed with fire like a pile of dry leaves.
Graeme gasped as he was racked with searing pain. Arabeth gripped him tighter and dragged him along hard enough to strain the socket of his shoulder, hurrying them both down the street away from the frenzy, away from the townsfolk in neighbouring houses leaning out from windows and doorways.
The farther they got, the easier it became for Graeme to breathe, and the burn faded in tandem. They took to the narrow alleys between streets to stay hidden, passing a young man collapsed in the street. There was a blown torch smoldering beside him and a pair of ravens perched on each shoulder, pecking away at the soft parts of his face. Graeme tore his eyes away as quickly as he could, but not before he saw that the man no longer had any of his own.
Arabeth didn’t slow until they reached the farmland at the opposite edge of town and were huddled on the far side of Isenbrand’s barn, alive with the shuffling and mutters of the uneasy livestock. A few free-roaming chickens, still rumpled from their disturbed sleep, scuttled away as the two pressed themselves to the barn’s westerly wall and Arabeth peeked around the corner back towards town.
A steady column of dense black smoke was rising between the chimneys and mounds of thatch where the smithy stood, underlined by the orange glow of a growing fire.
Graeme pressed a hand to his chest, fighting to catch his breath. His skin still prickled with the ghost of the flaring burn and his legs wobbled under him a little as he was visited by a low note of that ringing rush in his ears. Alarmed voices carried with the ember and ash on the wind, some of them shrill and uncanny echoes.
“Come on,” Arabeth harshed, reaching for Graeme’s wrist.
Graeme evaded his grab, drawing his gaze, and for a moment they just regarded each other, wordless. After a moment Graeme took off in the direction of the bordering woods. Arabeth followed close at his heel.
They cut through the swaying green stocks of young barley as quick as they could manage. They went a while still into the trees before they stopped, out of breath, and Graeme slid to the ground against a old knotted elm.
Arabeth stared at him, feet firmly planted with more distance between them, his great shoulders rising and falling as he puffed. The wood was quiet around them, deadening any noise drifting from town. Graeme could not bear to hold his eye for long. After a drawn and tense pause, Arabeth sheathed his sword.
“How did you do that?” he demanded, his voice rocky from exertion.
Graeme peeled his fingers slowly from the hilt of the dagger, uncurling his stiffened grip and letting it clatter to the tendril weave of dark roots and emerald moss beneath him.
“I told you,” he murmured. “They do what I tell them to.”
“What did you tell them to do?” pressed Arabeth.
Graeme drew his shoulders when he saw the sickened look Arabeth couldn’t hide. “They would have killed us.”
“No,” said Arabeth. “They thought I had you captive. They still will.”
Graeme rubbed at his sore shoulder and frowned. “You did that on purpose.” He shook his head. “Why would you do that?”
Arabeth twisted the wedding band around his finger absently. “You’ll have an easier time building a new life as victim than a monster. I did it for your own good.”
“And you propose to know my own good better than I?”
“Graeme, please—”
There was a rustle in the branches high above that made them both flinch, but there was nothing to see save for a single disturbed leaf that twirled in a great spiral between them.
“Whatever you’ve done,” Arabeth went on, “whatever all that was, you don’t have to wear it on your back. Your hands are clean—you can live quietly. That is a gift only a fool would squander.”
Graeme stared down at his grimy fingers, his nails caked with drying gore. “My life has never been quiet, nor will it.”
Arabeth heaved a heavy sigh through his nose and shifted his weight between his feet, ducking a little under a leafy bough to scan around.
“You asked me about the dagger,” said Graeme. He nodded to it, laid out on the overlapping root limbs by his feet. “What do you know of it?”
“Who says I know anything of it?”
“The look on your face. Your insistence on bringing it with us, but not taking it yourself—giving it instead back to me after I begged you take it away.” Graeme rubbed absently at his cheek with the heel of his hand. “You recognise it, don’t you?”
Arabeth sighed. “Not… exactly. The metal is familiar to me, the red. I’ve seen it once before—I once had a ring forged of it, given to me as payment for a blade. I didn’t think much of it other than wondering how it had gotten such a colour and that such a rarity must be valuable, until later that same night, someone broke into my old smithy back in Fyrrin and stole it. Only the ring.”
“And you haven’t any clue as to why?”
Arabeth shook his head. Frustrated, Graeme kicked the dagger away from him with his bootheel and pushed his hands into his hair.
“Maybe it’s cursed,” he pondered aloud, sounding hollow.
“Graeme…” Arabeth let the other man’s name hang in the air a moment. “Why did you never tell me you were a magician?”
“I’m not,” Graeme countered quickly. “No more than you are a fairy, or a rock-giant, or a shapechanger. That’s baseless rumour.”
Arabeth crossed his arms. “How then would you explain a hirson who can beck animals to his will?”
“I wouldn’t try.” Graeme tipped his head back against the trunk behind him, letting the rough bark catch his hair and scrape his scalp. “It’s far worse and doesn’t bear speaking of.”
Arabeth furrowed and straightened up, crowned in moonlit shadows and leaves of low-hanging branches. When they looked at each other then, neither of them looked away for a long while.
Graeme’s voice was soft and small when he asked, “Are you afraid?”
Arabeth answered by taking a slow step towards him, then another, until he was standing between Graeme and the discarded dagger.
“Of you?” he intoned, low and gentle. He pushed back his cloud of curls as he looked down at Graeme and grazed his fingertips over the scar in his eyebrow. “That depends. Are you going to send another rack of horseshoes flying at my head?”
Graeme twitched a bittersweet smile that left him like heat to snow. “I don’t want to hurt you, Arabeth. This affliction I… the thing that I am… is dangerous. Deadly. Despite my best efforts, I feel as though I am always one misstep from destroying something else, and it… I am terrified of it. Of me.”
“I know the feeling.”
Arabeth unwrapped his fingers from the hilt of his sword and held a hand out to Graeme.
Graeme gazed up at the other man in disbelief, eyes catching the starlight. “I wouldn’t blame you if you parted our ways here. In fact, I would think it probably the wisest of your options.”
“Probably.”
Arabeth kept his hand outstretched. Graeme huffed a short laugh and took it, allowing Arabeth to pull him up to his feet with a bit of a wobble.
“And people think I’m crazy,” he muttered. Arabeth shared his grin as he squeezed Graeme’s arm at the elbow. “Thank you, my friend.”
Arabeth offered a shallow nod of a bow. “If you won’t ask it, I will—what now?”
Both men looked up when there was a livelier rustling in the lower boughs above them and more shed leaves cascaded in a ring down to their feet.
Arabeth cursed under his breath when he saw dozens of glassy black eyes peering from the thickly shadowed foliage. They were all looking to Graeme. The closest raven gave a short low chitter when Graeme returned its gaze. Slowly, he held out his hand, and in a moment a winged shadow was fluttering down from the branches to land on his arm.
Arabeth watched, astounded, brow curving. Graeme stayed quiet.
The leaves shuddered overhead as one by one the birds took off, diving through the branches and disappearing upwards to the west. The last to go was the one perched on Graeme’s arm.
“They want me to follow,” he mumbled, half-dazed.
Graeme took a crunching step across the tindered ground before pausing and turning back to Arabeth. His feet were planted in place. Graeme reached to hold his hand out to Arabeth in the same manner he had with the raven, beckoning.
Arabeth hesitated. The wind kicked up and dragged with it the smell of haysmoke and ash.
“Come with me,” entreated Graeme, barely a whisper.
With a deep breath, Arabeth reached out and took his hand.
