Arc 4: Chapter 17: The Forest of Heads

    I stumbled through the woods, and they called out to me. The ones I’d killed.

    They grew from the trees like cancerous fruit. Some sprouted from hanging branches, others clustered in tumorous masses from the trunks themselves. Some rose up from the ground with bulging eyes and gnashing teeth.

    The heads my axe had taken filled the sickened forest. They whispered, laughed, shouted as my unsteady feet navigated the tangled undergrowth. They snapped at the hem of my red cloak, sobbed, begged.

    “Where are you going?” They mocked.

    I’d lost something. My eyes searched the tangled trees. Beyond them, I could see a light. It was pale and cold, featureless, and everywhere. Any way I turned, the light spilled like a moon’s blood. Even still, wherever I walked, the shadows pooled deep.

    “This is all there is!” The heads told me, glee and despair intermingling in their joined voices.

    Can''t be, I thought. Only, I couldn''t see anything else.

    From a low branch, a wizened face turned and opened rheumy eyes. The distant light caught on the golden circlet on his brow, outlining its woven design.

    “I served the gods too,” Leonis Chancer told me. Blood dripped beneath his chin, falling from a viscous, nearly solid mass hanging down like a beard. “Do they love you more than I, you think?”

    I spun away from the ghastly face, searching, searching...

    What had I lost?

    From the hollow of a crooked tree, a face emerged like a squeezing worm. Flesh strained against the edges of the hole, wrinkled and bruised. Bristled hair popped out, gray and filthy. Between the once proud mutton chops, yellow teeth flashed.

    “We all had something we were fighting for,” said Emery Planter, the Earl of Strekke. “I sought to protect my family from the degradations of this tired order. Do you think about my son still? The one you orphaned?”

    “Leave me be,” I growled.

    A shadow flitted between two trees. My eyes tracked it, looking for where it would reemerge. It didn’t, but I felt certain... I didn’t know what I felt certain of, but anywhere was better than here, with these ghoulish faces. I began to move toward it, trudging through the bleeding woods.

    “The light isn’t that way!” Emery laughed at my back.

    “He fears the light,” Leonis said conspiratorially. “It reveals ugly truths.”

    “Will it burn him to ash, you think?” This came from a man in an iron crown studded with green jewels, a king. His fiery hair had turned gray, his skin sallow. He rose from roots in the ground, like a foul pumpkin.

    “Do you remember how you dreamed of fighting me on the battlefield?” Rhan Harrower asked me with a crooked grin like a wound in his sunken features. “What would that proud young man think of you now, Alken Hewer?”

    “He’d probably have picked another name!” Emery cackled.

    The entire forest quivered with cruel laughter. In the distance, a dark shape passed from one cover to the next. It watched me in turn. I could feel its eyes, like a tether on my soul.

    But the Dead wouldn''t be ignored.

    "Bloody Al," Leonis scoffed. "Headsman. Blackbough. First Sword. What handsome titles you''ve gained!"

    "If only they all knew what a simpering puppy you are," Rhan sneered.

    “You’re all dead,” I hissed. “You were all monsters.”

    “But you didn’t kill us for what we did,” said a young, sweet voice.

    My bones turned to ice at the sound. I turned, despite every instinct in me screaming not to. From within the tangled limbs of a skeletal tree, like a fly caught at the center of a web, the pale face of a girl no older than fourteen stared at me with shadowed eyes. Her once fair hair had turned white in death.

    “Why didn’t you try to save me?” Irene hissed from above, her colorless eyes full of hate. “Like you did that Carreon bitch?”

    I caught a glint in the putrid undergrowth. I reached for it, languid and dull, the motion more impulse than intent.

    “You have no one but us,” Emery told me, his tone reasonable. “You are all alone.”

    “That’s not true,” I muttered, lifting my closed fist.

    “All the whore wants from you is your blood,” Leonis spat. “She has no love for you, no true affection. She is just a desperate leech.”

    “A beast warming herself by a fire,” Rhan hissed.

    “The Carreon will betray you,” Irene sang. “She will sell herself to your enemies and become strong, all your hopes discarded in her wake.”

    “Rosanna Silvering will use and discard you as ruthlessly as the Choir will,” the nobleman who bled black pus said with a cackle.

    “If her pet wizard doesn’t do it first,” the skull crooned.

    “And you will be left with us,” Rhan growled, his broken teeth bared in a rictus grin. “When all this is over, these are the seeds you’ve sown. Behold your garden!”

    I looked down at my closed fist, took a steadying breath, and opened my fingers. In the palm of my hand, a union of smooth black stone and ivory rested. My ring.

    “It would be best if you ended things, my child.” Leonis Chancer’s dry lips formed a fatherly smile. “Spare the world more pain. Are these trees not full enough?”

    I glanced up at the forest. There were plenty of empty branches. My eyes went back down to the ring. My hands were covered in blood, so I moved cautiously as I took it between the forefinger and thumb of my left hand. I slipped it onto my right hand, in its usual place on the first finger.

    It slipped off. My hands were too slick with blood. The ring tumbled to the ground. I dove for it, letting out a curse. It had fallen into the tangle of sick weeds and roots. I reached into them—

    And jerked my hand away at a flash of pain. Something had bit me. Within the thorny roots, rotted teeth grinned. I heard a gulp.

    Gone. The realization wasn’t unlike having a cut artery. Little pain, but lethal all the same.

    “No escape,” Irene whispered to me in a sweet, soothing voice. Her web of branches creaked as her pale face lowered down. “Best just end things, Alken Hewer. You’ve been a ghost for over ten years now.”

    “It’s the honorable thing to do,” King Rhan told me sternly. “Chin up, son. Far better warriors have fallen on their own swords.”

    The forest murmured around me, voices pitched between encouragement and bitter invective. The boughs quivered, not with wind but with the discontent of the dead.

    My ring was gone. I had no defense from these unquiet shades. They would haunt me to death or insanity, whichever came first.

    Perhaps it would be easier if—

    Once again, something moved through the trees. My gaze went to it.

    “Best not,” Emery warned. “There are far worse things than us in these woods, Headsman.”

    What was it? My eyes narrowed, trying to find it again. I stood, once again beginning my stumbling trek through the trees.

    “You’ll regret it!” The heads wailed.

    I ignored them, and kept moving toward the furtive shadow. It watched me with eyes of flame, a guide far dimmer than the distant silver glow, yet somehow far more intense. It led me deeper into the tangled forest, away from the light.