The Curse of Deepwood

Deepwood

Isen didn't notice the stranger until he stood before the dais. He was too focused on the game before him. Only when the game master looked up and coughed, did he spare a glance at the windswept tramp who had suddenly appeared in the grand hall. He stood staring up with large grey eyes, arms folded across his broad chest.

"Isen!" The stranger pronounced in a tone that reverberated in the empty space, "You called for me and I came."

Isen snorted and a sneer twisted his lips, "I did not send for any such as yourself, and how dare you address me as an equal?"

The dark-haired stranger laughed grimly, "How dare you address me at all, miserable of all miserable creatures?" He raised his hand in a single, fluid motion and every door and window in the hall flew open.

The game master cried out and cowered in his chair as great winds howled and blustered their way in, scattering the game pieces, and knocking over a fragile glass lamp which cascaded into a myriad fragments of glass as it hit the stone floor.

Isen stood, a proud, handsome figure on the dais, scorning the wind that threatened to tear the decorative blue satin cloak from his shoulders, "What witchery is this, madman? Think you that such tricks will daunt me?"

"Nay, I have far worse planned." The stranger replied and snapped his fingers. For a moment the room was dazzling with light and Isen saw not one but seven figures standing with upraised hands, then all was darkness.

Chapter 1 - Deepwood

"Ho, who goes there?" The challenge rang out in the predawn darkness. It was a morning shadowed with a mist which snaked along the ground, twisting itself about the long blades of grass and licking the edges of wind roughened stones. The watchman had thought he'd heard voices down there among the swirling tendrils of vapour, but as there was no answer, and he could see nothing, he shrugged and continued pacing along the north parapet of Hold Ironwood.

Hold Ironwood was named after the trees which made up the bulk of Deepwood, the dense forest crouching less than a quarter league beyond the northern gates. Much of the woodwork of the castle and keep was wrought from the flesh of the metal-like trees. Their trunks were so dark they were nearly black, and the wood itself rivalled ebony in colour. The leaves were dark green and broad like the elm, but with jagged edges like the maple and twice as large as a man's hand. It took three men the better part of a day with sharp-edged steel axes to chop and strip a small Ironwood tree. Nobody touched the large ones.

The forest of Deepwood had existed beyond mortal memory and Hold Ironwood had been around almost as long. What was more, there had always been a king bearing the Ironwood name to possess it, and the idea of anyone else presiding over the hold had never crossed the minds of either its inhabitants of any of the villagers and provincials who enjoyed the protection of its forbidding walls and noble reputation.

The watchman who now paced the northern walls had been born within the town of Ironwood, his ancestors stretching back beyond all reckoning. He was the youngest son of a sheep farmer and from his earliest years had dreamed of being able to add his name to the roster of the Ironwood guard. Now that the dream was reality, he dreamed of other things, usually, except for this morning where, gazing at the shadowy mist below, painted an eerie white by the last beams of the setting moon, he wondered about everything and anything he'd ever done in his life.

He shivered involuntarily as he looked up and out to the hulking forest of Deepwood, which was now only a looming mass of blackness in the dark gray light. He hadn't slept at all that night. He'd gone out early to take over his watch. Something was stirring that night...he could feel it in his unnaturally fluttering stomach, and high-strung nerves and it had nothing to do with the birth of the Queen's first child announced in the late afternoon of the preceding day.