The Arkanist

Chapter Twenty-One: Interlude- Kingsmen

Chapter Twenty-One: Interlude- Kingsmen

Morning dawned grey. Hale woke tired and sore and cold. It had rained for most of the night, and the winds had howled through the walls like sharp blades, prickling Hale's neckhairs to stand on end with every fierce rush.

He raised himself, and sat momentarily at the foot of his mattress. There, he stretched, and stretched out the toils of yesterday's work; but not every pain was erased. His back still cramped if he bent too much and his shoulders still felt weak and loose as splashing water.

This is what he deserved. He'd never worked that hard, that long. Back in Thaelin with his father, things were different. He was a cobbler. He made shoes. Sure, tanning leather and mending sore wood was difficult work, but it wasn't like this. Besides, he rarely ever worked with his father-- only some days. Most days, Hale was learning to read and write. His father had saved up, saved up for most of his life the coin enough to send him to school.

It was there, Hale learned to read Anuran, and Old Lentish, and Anturan, and even a little Gleath, and he learned to write it too, copying and translating. Such things do not demand physical labor.

The road had stripped what muscle he had too. It was a bleak and forsaken place, dark with the gloom of this Evernight. He had grown gaunt and weak, just like his father had...only he had not died of it, not yet, anyway.

Hale made his way out of his room, tucking the book in his cloak pocket, and turned down the narrow corridor into the taproom. Grey sunlight poured through the windows, illuminating a dead inn, forlorn and forgotten, the shadows pale and faint upon the emptiness.

The innkeeper was nowhere to be seen, but the door was open, creaked ajar slightly, the winds beating it with an irregular pulse. Hale ventured outside.

He parted the door with a shrieking, iron moan as the hinges worked, and he felt the cool morning sink its teeth into his flesh. The air itself was not entirely cold, just when the wind wailed, and the clouds darkened.

The road was empty and quiet and still, still as cold water, the ash falling slower than usual. He looked down the road, down by Aben's house, but nothing showed itself, only the sad remains of broken houses and shattered lives. Then, he looked back to the woods and saw a crowd gathered.

Hale raised the hood of his cloak and continued out off the porch of the inn and across the road, past the small farmland, and into the woods, where he saw it, saw enough to make the gods cry in their graves.

The town had gathered about a tall tree, white birch and naked, their cries soft upon the wind.

Roslin hung from the tree. She had killed herself.

Her body was pale and white as her dress, translucent in the silver morning sunlight and she hung from a rope of grey horsehair, her neck splintered and limp at its noose like a cloth draped from a chair.

Hale's eyes went soft and wet as he looked into hers. The wind had brushed her silver hair over her face like a veil, like a terrible shroud, and between the loose, dangling strands, her eyes watched the nothing with the sad fear of a young girl, blue and bright as the sun had been, long ago.

***

The axe came down like a thunderbolt, splitting the wood with a sharp pop and a startling crack. Hale wiped the sweat from his brow as he slid the wood from the chopping block and set another, wound back his axe, and thrust. The sounds echoed through the dim quiet with the staggering celerity of a bolt through flesh.