Hi again, folks! It's finally Kickstarter time! Which means that this is the post I've been waiting to share with you. Without further ado, I give you Chapter 1 of The Unshorn Thread, Book 1 of the Tales Misforgotten trilogy:
Chapter 1: Wart
At the edge of the grounds of Castle Ektor,
named after its self-titled Lord, there sat a tiny shamble of a thatched
cottage. This was the dwelling of Bedwyn, the groundskeeper of the tower-house
turned manor. It was also home to Bartholomew, Bedwyn’s fat and fluffy feline
friend, as well as a young whelp of a lad named Wart.
Late on the night of the spring
snowstorm Wart lay in bed, his eyes arguing with his mind as to the value of
sleep and, for that matter, bed times in general. He had just sat up and was
about to go back beside the fire when the thing had come into his room. The air
had gone solid and the room had filled with a gripping cold. Had Wart been
brave enough he would have drawn the covers over his head, but the very presence
of the warped thing at the foot of his bed stopped him. Wart stared into the dark in a vain attempt to fool both himself and
whatever this creature was into believing that he knew exactly where it lurked
and that he was not afraid. There was no seeing it. Only the deeper
darkness at the foot of his bed and the sense of ice forming along his spine
told him of the sudden danger in his room. A shambling, splintered figure had
slipped through the crack under the door. It was a good foot taller than a man,
but nowhere near as solid. A windy shadow of a thing, it hung there between him
and his only escape. Wart could hear his heart pounding away against his ear
drums. He knew they were red with blood as he felt the cold sweat beading upon
his forehead. He thought of how he wanted desperately to run screaming past it
and into Bedwyn’s room. He would be safe there. Bedwyn would be able to stop
it.
His eyes burned. He had been staring
into the blackness, not blinking, for what seemed like forever. He had not
dared move for fear of breaking whatever trance held the twisted figure in its
place. Then it moved.
Wart’s eyes were opening before he knew
that they had closed. He must have been clamping his eyes shut as tight as they
would go, for all Wart could see now was the shadowy after-image of eyes
staring back at him in the darkened room. He was on his back, lying against his
pillow. The thought that it had been a dream settled into his mind, starting
his heart again, allowing him to breathe in. It was a strangely labored breath.
Wart wondered if Bartholomew, the groundskeeper’s cat, had slunk under the
covers to fall asleep upon his chest.
His eyes were not focusing correctly. The
clouds still hung there, just in front of his face. In fact they were getting darker, and if at
all possible, deeper. Wart moved to sit up. His little arms did not budge. An
icy hand was wrapped tightly around each of them. Cold sweat began once more to
trickle down beside his ears. He choked. There had been no dream. The creature was
sitting upon his chest, its crooked legs crouched in a spidery squat. They had
not been images of his own eyes that Wart had seen, reflected through sleep,
they had been those of the creature. The pressure on his chest had been its
cold weight settling upon him, pushing him down. Wart felt as if the mere
proximity of the thing was keeping his eyes heavy. It was as if he were
fighting to wake from a deep slumber, but he now knew he had not slept a wink.
He tried to scream. The sound trembled out of his lips as a shudder, too weak
for Bedwyn to hear. The creature's eyes were fixed upon him. It did not move. Its
face hung so closely to his that only his weakening breath could pass between
them. Its eyes, those dark pits, hung in front of his, staring into him,
burrowing into his heart with their icy gaze.
Wart’s heart was trying to escape his
chest. The beating was so forceful that he could feel the blood pumping along
his veins and into his head and arms, the creature's grip too tight for the
blood to pass his elbows. He felt as if he were going to pop from the dizzying
pressure. The throbbing of his head seemed to be flowing through the air now, the
pain and blood lifting out of his skull and into the caverns that hung before
him. Focusing on the blood in his eyes,
Wart could see the foul thing pulling at the strands of his life that flowed
towards it. With every strained beat of his heart those winding funnels of ash
were swelling, their edges pounding closer and closer to him. It was as if a
part of him were being torn away from behind his stomach and being pulled out
through his eyes, towards those swollen pits of dark. Wart knew he had only
moments left before he could fight no longer. His lungs shook with the strain
of rising, desperate to gather their last few scattered and shallow breaths. His
head was so filled with blood that his vision had
been tinted a dark maroon. Something beneath the skin under his left eye popped
and a thin trickle of the vital fluid began a steady crawl down the pale
surface of his upper lip.
As it all faded away, Wart thought of
Bedwyn. He thought of how Bedwyn cared for him and of how Bedwyn would be left
to keep the grounds of Castle Ektor alone without him. He thought of how old
and weak Bedwyn was and how the poor man could hardly get through his share of
the grounds-work without developing a severe case of the shakes. These thoughts
made Wart’s already over-worked heart heavier still. It wasn’t right. Bedwyn
was a good man, and his was the only care Wart recieved from the world. The
thought of Bedwyn alone was too much for Wart. It just wasn’t fair. He
struggled once more against the drain he felt in his stomach. Wart knew he was
going to die, but he didn't care. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. He may
only have been a groundskeeper’s apprentice for these first seven years of his
life, but he was living on the grounds of a tower-house and a defender thereof
by default if not by right. He was
young, yes, and weak, but Wart had to fight.
He had to fight for Bedwyn and for Bartholomew and for himself, even if
he was going to die. His heart told him so.
It was at that moment that something
strange happened. Wart’s vision cleared,
but it was not the wraith that he saw before him, nor was it his room, but
another place, and he saw it through different eyes:
Staring at the collapsed cottage through
the bleak world surrounding him, the old man wondered how long he had been
standing there. Standing across the lane, he was a good stone's throw from the
shrunken cottage. Even with the blades of ice falling like sundered chandeliers
between them, he saw every sad detail of it without even a squint of his
weathered eyes. Every now and again a tattered wisp of gray flitted before his
face. He did not raise a finger to pull the strands of hair back. He did not stir at all.
Had he been there to see it? He
wondered. Had he watched in morbid fascination as the thatch had fallen and the
cold death had slid in? Or was it merely too predictable a set of happenings
not to have been guessed? The bedpost, barely visible now above the snow,
seemed to shout out to him. “Horror! Death!” it cried, and from somewhere deep
within him a sigh began to build. It bled out from his stomach and flooded up
through his chest, churning the emptiness therein, giving it weight. Passing
through his scarcely open lips the sigh hung in the air for a moment, solid and
white, before it was carried away by the gale. For a moment he had forgotten
the wild winds and the heaping icy siege. Watching his breath dissipate into
the falling ice, he noticed that his face stung as if lashed by a thousand
stinging nettles. The pain forced his eyes away from the sad, broken home. He
wondered again how he had come to be in this place. There was no path to be
seen in the snow, no telling dip in its level to discern how he had gotten to
this place. The snow was so flat around
him that he, buried up to his knees, tendrils of snow climbing the folds of his
cloak, looked more like some warped old oak tree than a man. It seemed to him that the land had simply
forgotten how he had gotten here, and in truth he was inclined to echo it's
sentiment on the matter. He hadn't the
slightest idea how he had come to this place of frozen death. In truth, it
seemed, he had no solid memories whatsoever. Only shadows and ghosts danced and
faded through his mind.
‘It must be this damnable storm,’ he
thought to himself. ‘The cold and the discovery of this sad affair must have jilted
me of my faculties,’ he thought, glancing again at the tomb that stood in the
darkness ahead of him. ‘Best to take myself away from this place, find
somewhere I can regain my senses.’
Turning his eyes away from the ruined
home, however, yielded no such refuge. He closed his eyes and stooped his head,
and for a moment seemed to admit defeat. His back hunched forward slightly, and
masses of tangled, ice-encrusted hair fell beside his face. For a moment he was
again motionless, a gnarled mass for the winds to
beat against.
A thunderous burst of
frozen air swept through the yard, toppling the ice from the signpost, as it
had done many times over that night. The small lump of white plopped down upon
the old man's foot. The old man's neck creaked as it swung slowly upward toward
the sign. Glancing at the language thereupon, the old man's eyes inspected the
single word carved into the wood: Myrddin.
A spark skittered across his mind. A small but
definite flame appeared behind his eyes, and the man set off, down the hill towards town. The
wind billowed across his back, sending icy tendrils of hair ahead of him. They
seemed to strain in an attempt to hurry him along whatever path it was he had
chosen. Try as they might, however, they could not speed him on his way. His
progress was slow, every step seemed heavily weighted. His muscles felt as if
they had shrunk with age and lack of use while they had been holding him,
rooted to that spot before the cottage. Even so, it would have been hard to
make him out a moment later from where the disemboweled cottage stood, a figure
fading into the storm as it slunk down the hill.
Back in his room, Wart breathed deeply.
His chest rose, despite the dark weight pressing down upon him. His eyes flew
open, the fire of resolution burning behind them. He stared back into those
black wells that had so nearly sucked the life from him.
Loosing a piercing scream that sounded
as a thousand birds dying the creature pitched backwards, bristling with rage.
This sort of resistance to it's witchery it had not known to be possible. One
instant, the boy had been nearly dead, drawing his last breath, and the next he
was fighting as a man possessed by some great beast. The creature's grip on
Wart’s arms loosened.
Knowing his only chance to free himself
had arrived, Wart tugged with all his might at his right arm and, to his
everlasting joy, it wrenched its way free. At his bedside there was a pewter
goblet filled with water. Bedwyn had left it for Wart to drink when he got thirsty
in the middle of the night. Wart’s hand reached out desperately for the cup. With
an earsplitting howl, the creature raised its left arm to crush Wart’s skull,
but the boy acted quicker, bringing the goblet down onto the creature's
shoulder with all the force his young arm could give. Water sloshed over the
bed. There was a sound like the
crackling of leaves, and the creature's arm gave way, dissipating as it
scattered across the bed.
The goblet burned cold in Wart’s hand, forcing
him to let it fall clattering to the floor. The creature’s arm was beginning to
rustle itself into clumps now. It was going to re-attach itself to the murky
well from which it had fallen. Tugging his left arm free, Wart clasped his
hands together. Years of torment from Sir Kaye had shown him how to fight those
larger than himself. Clenching both his hands together, Wart swung his arms,
slamming them into the right side of the creature's head. The sound of leaves
came again and the creature lurched sideways off of the bed, unable to catch
itself with its damaged arm.
Wart was up like a light, and running to
the closed door. The creature, now crumpled on the floor, threw its good arm
toward him. It was too long a distance for the thing to have caught him, but
just as the creature's fingers stopped short, Wart was gripped ‘round the
heart, fingers of cold piercing his chest. His pulse raced. He was slowing
down, running through torrents of murk that rushed back towards the broken
figure on the floor. The haze was thick around him, but Wart could still see
the doorknob ahead. He reached out through the currents of black and grasped
it. Turning the knob, Wart heard the creature issue a low and rumbling wail, a
final attempt to keep him from escaping its grasp. Wart flung the door open and
ran screaming into the hallway, slamming the door back against its hinges as he
went.
UPDATE:
The scene that met Wart’s eyes was one
of utter horror. The heavy oaken door that led into the cottage from the cold
was dashed to smithereens. Splinters were all that hung from its iron hinges.
It looked as if the door had slammed heavily into the chair that sat before the
fire. Bedwyn’s chair. Cloth and framework were scattered across the stone floor,
mingled with traces of blood. Against the mason-work at the far end of the room
was a large red mark. It was thick and wet, and little rivulets of blood were
still winding their way down the canals of the rough stonework wall... winding
towards a small, crumpled shape lying broken upon the floor. A shape almost too
small to have been the old man. Yet it was. Bedwyn was gone. For a moment
Wart’s world stood still. There was no feeling left in the world. All was numb.
It felt like it must be a wicked prank or some dream from which he would soon
wake.
Then the cold returned. Cold from the
shattered door, and cold from that which slouched ever closer to Wart from
behind. Wart turned to see the thing forcing itself to its full height from
beneath the door from his room. It grew in short bursts, each of them sounding
like the snapping of tinder. The fight withdrew from Wart's heart. The man of
which he had been so sure, his savior, was dead and gone; a battered corpse
clotting upon the floor. Tears began to be drawn up from the well in his
stomach. Tears of loss, of fear. Tears that told him he could do no more
against this evil that had come into his world and destroyed his everything.
Wart fell to his knees. What good was being a defender of the castle if there
was no good left within it to save? Wart closed his eyes and waited for the
thing to grasp him once again.
A a ripple in the cold wind from the
door told Wart that someone was in the room with him, someone already standing
between him and the vile creature. He would not yet open his eyes, but Wart was
sure it was the strange old man he had seen in his mind’s eye. A voice heavy
with age, but strong as that of a lord rebounded against the walls of the small
cottage. “Your ilk have seen their last, creature! This child is now under the
protection of something you cannot revoke with your darkness! Your hate and
your hunger are now your own to bear. Sate them, now, as you have made so many
others do in your time. Sate them and be undone!”
There was a hideous noise then, a scream
like that of many dying birds mingled with the low moan of ancient despair. Then
followed a strange and deep crack, as if some great breach had opened in a wall
of ice. A ripple of air swept past Wart’s ears and all was still.
“Child? You are safe now little one,”
came the voice again, emanating from the world beyond Wart’s shut eyelids — a
world Wart was very much trying to deny existed. “Come now,” it insisted, “what
good is it to shut out the light after so nearly letting in the dark, eh?”
At
this Wart began to sob, his chest heaving up and down violently with each
breath. It was too much to be reprimanded now, too much by far. Trying to shut
out every last inch of the world he now hated, Wart cupped his hands over his
ears. If only he could find a way not to breathe, he might not have to take in
any of it any longer.
“Haha, well this just won't do, now will
it?” the man said. “Up we go.” Wart felt two strong hands scoop him up from under
his arms and into the air. A strange and not altogether comforting bristliness
met his face, accompanied by a rough cloth, which Wart grabbed ahold of out of
some instinct which all children share. They were moving now, out into the
storm. Wart had thought the ice and snow would have frozen him to the core
instantly, and just as he was about to utter a whimper to that effect, he
opened his eyes. The flakes of snow and ice were, it seemed, whirling all about
them and landing upon the ground. Few, no none, of them were striking
either he or the old man he could now see carrying him. The bristliness had
been a long grey beard, stuck here and there with a small twig or a bit of
leather. Was it the beard that smelled of sage? Bringing a strand to his nose,
Wart thought it must be the bits of leather that did so. It was an odd sort of
thing to do, he decided, but not altogether stupid.
Wart glanced over the old man's shoulder
at his home, immediately regretting that he had. Thankfully, Bedwyn’s cottage
was already being gobbled up by the sheets of snow that still strangely refused
to touch Wart or the old man. Wart shuddered and turned his head to rest on the
chest of his unexpected guardian, making an even less expected realization as
he did so. They were headed towards Castle Ektor! Surely the old man must be heading
past the tower-house. Even a weathered transient like him would have heard of
the temper of the lord of this land. There was no mistaking it now. The path
they were walking was a bee-line, its only possible destination the main gate
of the castle. The main gate. Wart had never entered through the main
gate before. A small door around and down the rocky foundation was reserved for
the servants and grounds-folk.
“We mustn’t,” he blurted out. “Lord Ektor
will throw us in the dungeons for it.” Neither their pace nor their direction
altered in the slightest. “Sir, please,” Wart said, “I do not wish to see you
imprisoned, sir. We mustn’t —”
“Quiet now, child. All is well,” came
the quiet reply. Wart didn't know why this calmed him, only that it did. “What’s
your name, eh boy?” asked the old man.
“W-Wart,” stammered the boy, “or
least-wise that’s what I’ve been called more often than anything else, far back
as I can recall.”
“Well Wart, you will soon be warm and
safe again. You have my word,” the old man said. Wart kept silent as they
crossed the last few feet to the gate.
As they reached the castle there was a
scuffling sound from behind the large wooden door. A small porthole opened and
a pair of large eyes and an even larger pair of nostrils pressed themselves up
to the opening. “What's this then?” the guard asked. “Are you expected? No one’s
told me of any arrivals after supper.”
“We’re coming in,” The old man expounded.
“It’s cold and the child has had a terrible shock.”
“Not expected?! Raggamuffings at the
door? Oh you’d do well to remember whose manor this is, you rusted old
plough-share!” the guard nearly screeched.
“I don’t care one iota whose manor this
is,” retorted the old man, his grip tightening ever so slightly around Wart’s
middle-section. “I shall repeat the damn well obvious fact that it is frigid
out here and that there is a child in need! If that is not reason enough, then
let me tell you that I have just come from across what I assume you call a
green in the summer-time and that the cottage just a stone’s throw away has
been broken in! Does the fool who lords over this land care at all for the safety
of those who dwell in it? At the very least he should care for his own!”
The words were of such force that the
guard shuddered back from the timbers of the door. He stood there a moment, a
barely visible pair of eyes in the dim light of the entry-hall. Then the eyes
squinted and the porthole was slammed shut. An instant later there was a loud
clanking and a rustling, the like of which was usually associated with a sword
clattering against a metal sheath as it was drawn. The door began to swing
heavily open, the guard behind it most likely about to yell something to the
effect of “how dare you threaten the safety of our Lord Ektor,” as he charged
out the door at the old man. These words, however, never quite made it to the
outside world, but were instead stuffed back down into the guard’s stomach,
just as the guard himself was stuffed back into the entry hall and pressed
against the stone wall behind the main gate.
The instant the latch had been undone,
the old man, with remarkable swiftness, had swept forward and gripped the door
by its edge and, one hand still carrying Wart, slammed it and the guard well
and hard against the wall. In they went, man and child, to the warmth and
refuge of Castle Ektor, the Main Gate thudding against its frame as the aged
conqueror kicked it shut behind them.
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