North

Part 1. Cyrinth

Mir slumped to the ground, landing hard. She didn’t notice the pain that jolted through her anymore than the tears which streamed unheeded from her eyes. Chaos boiled before her as townsfolk, roused from their slumber by the explosion, stumbled from their homes into madness. Howling winds tore at them, and a stench like that of a long-sealed tomb filled the air. The source, a twisting funnel of darkness, spiraling where the village green once lay.

Blood streamed down Mir’s face from where debris had struck her. She had been returning from the communal privy when the explosion erupted, destroying her home along with most of the center of town. Stone and debris had erupted outward, a chunk of the statue that had once stood upon their green gashing the side of her head. Her thumb played across the jagged stone which she clutched in her hand as she sat, watching the darkness envelop her village.

The darkness seemed a living thing as it devoured her home. Churning into a funnel cloud of black death, it spilled away from the central whirlwind like fog. Within the blackness, shapes moved - men and women, their tortured faces and gaunt bodies pressing against the swirling black in a vain attempt to escape. Their mouths opened in silent screams before they vanished back into the darkness.

Mir sat numbly just a few scant paces away, her legs stretched out before her, her thoughts drifting. The spring morning had dawned cold and drizzly, the kind of rain that seeped through clothes and chilled the bones. It was appropriate weather for the funeral of Myxolan, the old librarian. Though Mir had only known him in passing, as one knows everyone in a village the size of Cyrinth, she had felt a pang of sadness, especially for Nulk, the boy he had taken under his wing.

Grief had filled her, as she stood watching Nulk, shoulders slumped, staring at the body of his friend. If the funeral were not enough, before it ended the trumpets sounded, and all eyes had turned to see the column of soldiers in their red and black armor riding into town by twos: The Harrowguard. Come to collect the Right and the Due*. Today of all days.

Her thoughts snapped back to the present as a voice roared from the darkness. The words were incomprehensible to her, and indeed she had no idea how words could even issue forth from the thing that loomed at the center of the swirling darkness. It was shaped like a man, though massive and more threatening in every way. With limbs the size of tree trunks, and easily as wide as two men standing abreast, its head, if it had one, would have stood at least twelve reaches** high. However, it had no head and instead, where there should have been one, there was nothing.

Mir barely registered the booted feet that stopped in front of her, or the tattooed face of the man who squatted down to look at her. Those tattoos, creating a complex pattern of intersecting lines from forehead chin, meant something, she knew that, although her mind could not process what just now. Gently he pulled her to her feet, speaking words she didn’t hear. Her gaze remained fixed on the darkness that had swallowed her life.

The man began to pull Mir backwards even as soldiers streamed past him, forming a line between the darkness and the townsfolk.

“No,” she said, struggling against the man. “No, they’re in there.” she pulled away, scrabbling towards the darkness, ready to plunge into it and join her family.

“Stop,” he said in a quiet voice that cut through the chaos. The word was a command that could not be ignored. Instantly, she stopped, almost as if someone had taken hold of her physically.

“No!” Mir shouted frantically, straining to move, “Let me go!”

“I will not.” the man replied, his voice firm.

“You have to let me go!” Mir wailed, not really speaking to him, “They’re in there, they need me.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied and his voice now carried a sadness echoed in his eyes, “If they are in there, they are gone.”

“No!” Mir shouted again, “No, I don’t believe it. My babies need me.”

“If you go in there,” the man said, “you will die.”

Mir knew he spoke honestly. “I don’t care!” she shouted, and then, without realizing it, added, “I want to die!”

The man’s face twisted in pain and again, so quiet she should not have been able to hear him, he said, “I know,” and then again: “I know, but your time is not today.”

She slumped, all resistance going out of her. She would have fallen to the ground had the man not caught her in his arms. “I am sorry,” He whispered.

Mir clung to him, tears bubbling up and out of her as she wept. “Deryx.” she whispered helplessly, “Ire. Zor. Syth.” she continued, the names of her children. “I want to die.” she said again, but the fight had gone out of her.

The man looked at her. “Not today.” he said.

“I want to be with them. Please, let me die.” Mir begged.

“Not this night.” He looked at her, lost for a moment in thought as around them chaos churned. Finally he said, “I have need of someone to carry a message for me. You will do this thing.”

Mir wanted to say no, she even opened her mouth to say that, but she could not. As the man uttered the words, You will do this thing, she felt them settle on her like a weight. A great burden from which she could not escape. She felt it in her heart, in her bones, she would do this thing.

“And when it is done,” the man continued sadly, “if you still seek death, then you may find it.”

At last her mind placed him. Placed those tattoos, and she knew him for what he was. She should have been afraid she knew, instead, she was confused. This man, with his gentle touch, his kind voice, his compassion, how could he be what she knew him to be? A dread witch, one of the horrible monsters who worked dark magic to the fel will of the Sovereign. How could she find such kindness in a shadowbinder?

Part 2. The Wilderness

In the still gray dawn of the following morning, Mir made her way out of the village. Behind her, the cloud of darkness had spread to cover an area more than two longreaches*** in diameter. Some twenty Harrowguard, distinct in their black and red armor, patrolled its perimeter in small groups, while others helped organize the survivors, assembling them into caravans that would be sent south. The shadowbinder had left an hour earlier, departing west with a group of soldiers.

The days that followed were difficult. Mir had never gone far from her village, and her body was ill prepared for the strain of so much walking. By midday on that first day, her breath came in ragged gasps, and her legs ached with each step. She stopped often, and would have laid down in the dirt to die, but she could not. Always the words of the shadowbinder drove her onward. “North,” he had said to her, “Go north until you reach the Plateau of Wyrk, which you can recognize by its vastness. It rises high enough to obscure the sun and stretches wider than the eye can see. Atop its heights you shall find the Veil Sanctuary. My home, and your destination.”

The words, the command, haunted her. North. Go North. Those words drove her onward, beyond the limits of her body. They forced her to keep moving, through the pain, through the agony. In the haze she had no room for thinking, no room for sorrow. No room even to remember her little ones, now lost to that swirling darkness. For Mir, there was only the burning agony of her body and the command. North to the Veil Sanctum, to the home of the shadowbinders, the last place on earth she’d ever want to go.

By the time she reached a stopping place on that first night, she was so exhausted and spent that she collapsed to the ground. Every muscle ached and she took only enough time to roll out her blanket and fall into it before sleep took her. While Mir’s day had been blessedly empty, free of the sorrow of the prior night, her dreams were not. In them, she was forced to watch over and over as the monster with no head took her family from her.

It always began with the explosion, sending debris in all directions. The first time she dreamed the dream, a spear of timber broke from the home and pinned her beloved Krenos to the wall, killing him instantly. The next time it was a stone that shattered his head. The next, the wall of the house collapsing, crushing him. No matter the dream, always Krenos died in that explosion. Her husband, her friend. Dead before her eyes more times than she cared to count. And that was only the start. After that, her children were taken. Some by death, others by darkness, but always they were taken.

Mir dreamt it time and again, always close enough for them to see her, to scream to her, beg for her to help, but far enough away that she could not reach them in time. In one dream her youngest babe Zor died to the headless creature’s hands. In the next, the explosion killed her and in the next she wandered asleep out of the house, she had always been a sleepwalker, and Mir thought she would be able to save her. Zor trundled towards Mir, a smile on her face. She had still been smiling when, not more than two steps away, the headless monster had scooped Zor up and drug her away into the darkness, shrieking.

Mir awoke screaming for Zor. She felt tears well up inside her and bitterly pushed them down. She wanted to die. She howled in frustration of being denied this mercy. She could not die. She could only go north. North to the Plateau of Wyrk. Ignoring the burning in her limbs, she breakfasted on cheese and bread and then set out again. The terrain grew wilder as she ventured further from Cyrinth. Soft rolling hills became steep cliffs, and paths vanished into the underbrush. She walked in a haze, the night’s dreams blending with the reality of the prior evening, until it became difficult to discern truth from imagination.

Two days became three, three became four. Mir lost track of time. She dreamt of her family. She watched them die. She trudged north up and down hills, through tall grasses. She slept. She ate. Nothing remained for Mir. Nothing but the simple command. North. Go North. North to the Plateau of Wyrk. And so she did. Moving ever further from Cyrinth and closer to Wyrk.

On the fourth day out of Cyrinth she encountered a river that cut through her path. Long ago a bridge had stood there, now only the remnants of stone pillars marked where it once had been. At any other time, she could have simply waded across, but at this time, with the winter melts filling the rivers to bursting, she could not. Instead, she followed it upstream for most of a day before finding a place where it forked and the waters ran less fiercely. Here she waded into the icy flow, desperately clutching her pack overhead.

She nearly died in that water. It was so cold that her body refused to obey her commands and fought her every step. That she wanted to die, to let the water wash her away, made it worse. In her mind she begged the Twin Gods to take her, to wash her downriver. Yet, always, the command drove her on, lending her strength. She would do this thing. At length, when she emerged on the far side, she collapsed there on the bank, breathing hard and unable to continue. She didn’t move until the next morning.

After that, the loss of her family, and her own inability to join them in death, settled around her like a thick blanket, despair as black as that which had taken them. It grew inside her like a cancer until finally, spent, she collapsed under the shadow of an old oak and curled into a ball and wept. As the tears came, something inside her changed. Opened. A willingness to feel. Her body heaved with the sobs and her hand bled as the jagged piece of stone from the village dug into her palm.

As she let her mind feel the loss, see her little ones before her, she wailed. A sound of profound suffering and loss. Mir cried not from pain, not from fear, and not from anger. Instead, she wept for her loss and loneliness. She wept for her husband, her girls, her boys. She wept for all she had lost. She wept until she passed out and for the first time since that night in Cyrinth, she slept untroubled by nightmares.

The following morning she woke from the haze of her journey. The sound of songbirds caressed her ears and a gentle breeze brushed her skin. Her body no longer burned with pain. Instead it had become strong, supple, hard. Tentatively, she thought of her family, probing the memories carefully, like a wound. The ache of loss remained, and Mir knew it would forever, but it was different now, no less painful, but different. Mir smiled fondly, remembering her children not in death but in life.

Day by day she pushed further north further from home but closer to civilization. And day by day she climbed further out of the pit of despair. When, more than a week after leaving Cyrinth, she crested a hill to spy rooftops in the distance, she felt good. Content to be alive, and ready to go on, and even, she thought, maybe even a little thankful to the shadowbinder who had refused to let her die.

Part 3. Alder

“I canna.” Thold said, shaking his head. His great white beard swung from side to side, “This time a year there’s nothing for it but to wait it out. All that extra water coming down from high up, and bringin’ all manner of things with it.” He motioned at the churning waters behind Mir, “No, I canna take you over. Maybe in two, three weeks, when the water settles, we can cross.”

Mir ground her teeth in frustration. Three days in Alder, three days of pleading with Thold to brave the crossing. The Vyrathar was indeed swollen, a torrent of danger. Logs and debris hurtled downstream, propelled by the river’s wrath. Yet Mir could feel the compulsion gnawing at her, urging her onwards. North. She must go north. She could wait no longer.

“Please.” Mir heard herself saying, though it took no more than a glance at the the ferry rocking in the turbulent waters of the river to know he would not relent. He would not relent and she could wait no longer. She knew what she needed to do.

Hours later, moving through the darkness towards the docks, Mir was thankful for the heavy cloud cover that deepened the shadows. The town of Alder was silent, its people having long-since retreated to their homes to escape the night’s cold bite. She watched Thold’s small, river-side shack until the light within flickered out, then crept towards the ferry.

She paused, hesitant. She had never stolen anything before. Nor had she piloted a ferry, or any craft for that matter, on the water, let alone a river as angry as the Vyrathar. But she knew she could not stop. She must go north. Already she had wasted too much time in Alder. Carefully, quietly, she crept from her hiding place and crossed to the ferry.

Up close, it was larger than Mir had realized. Alder’s ferry was a flat-bottomed ship, with a pulley mechanism mounted on it, which in turn attached it to a series of heavy hempen ropes, themselves secured to anchor points on either side of the 900-reach span. Mir eyed the pulley system skeptically, uncertain she had the strength needed for the task. Yet she had to try.

Loosening the mooring lines, Mir pushed the ferry off the dock with a long, wooden pole. It lurched awkwardly into the frothing river, the current seizing it immediately. The force yanked the ferry downstream, throwing Mir off her feet. She hit the deck hard, cold wood jarring her bones and she struggled to stand, tossed to and fro as the ferry rocked violently in the churning water.

When she pulled herself to her feet, Mir glanced back and caught a light flickering on in Thold’s shack. Moments later, the old ferryman rushed out, arms pinwheeling as he raced towards the docks shouting. His words were drowned by the roar of the river as the ferry rushed away from the docks of Alder, leaving his frantic figure behind.

The crossing was a battle - possibly the hardest thing Mir had ever done. The river thrashed and roared, each wave like a mountain rising before her and each dip a valley threatening to swallow her whole. Frigid water splashed over the sides, soaking her to the bone, numbing her fingers, but not her resolve. She must cross. She must go north. Her mind echoed with the compulsion as darkness enveloped her, the white froth of the angry water her only visible guide.

She had made it perhaps halfway across when the ferry staggered with a sudden blow. Mir never saw the fallen tree that struck the vessel. One moment she was gripping the ropes, the next she was airborne, flung into the air. Time seemed to stretch as she flew over the water. Panic surged through her as she found the ferry, or what remained of it, tearing free of the guide ropes to rush downstream.

Then she hit the water and forgot about the ferry. The cold water struck her like a blow, stealing her breath and freezing her limbs. She tried to swim, but her hands moved as if through thick jelly. She tried kicking her feet, but her legs too refused to obey. She began to sink, the icy water pulling her down. Sounds became muffled and darkness pressed in on her as she splashed underwater. Panic surged inside her. She was going to die!

She sank in silence, at first struggling, but then giving in. It was enough. Hadn’t she wanted this? And then his voice cut through the quiet: “North. Go north.” The words seemed to fill her with strength. She must go north. She had to get out of this water.

She kicked. North. Go North. The compulsion pounded in her mind. She struggled. She must get out of the water. She must go north. Her lungs burned for air, the cold threatened to pull her into oblivion. She refused, fighting against it. At last her head broke the surface and she gasped for air, the cold searing her lungs. Water splashed around her and the roar of the river deafened her. The current had pulled her downriver, but also drug her towards the far shore. She could make it.

She began to swim, the shore a blur. The cold bit her but she forced her mind to focus, her body to obey. Arm over arm, she clawed through the freezing water. Slowly but surely she drew closer to her destination, driven by the relentless command. North. Go north. Finally, her numb fingers grasped mud and rocks. She pulled herself onto the bank, collapsing in a heap. She had made it.

• The Strykaran Sovereign claims the Right to own any person capable of working magic and demands a Due in children to fill the ranks of his dreaded Harrowguard.

** A reach is roughly the equivalent of an Imperial foot.

*** A longreach is approximately 300 Imperial feet.