Shadowbound

Shadowbound: Episode 4

There is a stone at the side of this road with a split down the centre of it, wide enough to put a hand through. I knew it was coming a full mile before we reached it. That is the difficulty with this stretch of our journey. I have been along it more times than I care to count. The shape of the land does not surprise me here, and every mile that unrolls beneath us sets another weight down behind my ribs.

You notice. As you always do, but I am not surprised.

You have made a profession of reading what people would rather keep private.

Vivianne: You have said nothing since the ford.

Damion: There is nothing worth saying.

Vivianne: That has never stopped you before.

I do not answer.

I take the reins in my fist and I look at the ridgeline, recalling the shapes along it.

At least I no longer have to walk. The horse we decided to take from the crown's men, or bandits, as you would call them, is serving me well.

Vivianne: You are angry.

Damion: No. I am tired.

Vivianne: You have been tired for the length of this journey. This is different. You have not looked at me since noon.

Damion: Then perhaps you should enjoy the peace.

It comes out harder than I intend it to, but I do not take it back.

The light goes early in the North. It does not set so much as give up entirely. A feeling I find to be closer to home than I would care to admit.

By the time the cold greets us, there is nothing left of the day but a broken grey seam over the hills, and you are already swaying in the saddle.

I can hear your breath catching on every third one.

Damion: Vivianne.

Vivianne: I am fine.

Then, ahead and low against the slope, a house. Lamplight in two windows and smoke going up, thin and straight.

Everything in me judders.

Vivianne: There. A house.

Damion: Ignore it. We ride past it.

Vivianne: We will not.

Damion: Vivianne, we cannot stop here.

Vivianne: I cannot feel my hands. I have not been able to feel them since the ford, and I have kept my complaints to myself. So do not ask me to suffer another night in the open to spare you, whatever this is that you are feeling.

There are a great many things I could say. Reasons to turn back, reasons to go ahead. I have had a long while to gather them, but my tongue turns heavy and I find I cannot urge them forth, these excuses. The door opens before I knock.

It is a hospice.

A long low room, stone underfoot, a fire burning strong at the far end and pallets down both walls. The air within smells of tallow and wet wool, and the particular sourness of too many bodies drying out at once. There are perhaps twenty of them, that I can see. Travellers by their boots, pilgrims by the way they hold themselves, all of them northbound, the same way we are. Towards the sanctuary.

They make room whilst another kindly takes our horses. A woman presses a cup of hot liquid into your hands before you even move to take your gloves off, her eyes down, refusing to meet yours.

That is the first, unusual thing you notice.

The second comes when your sleeve slips.

It is nothing. You reach for the cup once we are seated and the wool falls back off your wrist by two fingers' width. The dark lines inked along your skin show for a brief moment, climbing. The room goes so quiet I can hear the fat spitting in the lamps. Then, a man at the near table gets down on his knees, and one by one the rest of them follow him.

Twenty people on a stone floor with their heads bent, not one daring to look at you.

You go still. And in that stillness, I can see your mind working.

Vivianne: What are they…?

Damion: Ignore it.

Vivianne: Get up.

You question and command, yet they remain.

Vivianne: I said get up!

A woman near the fire begins to speak, low and even. It is not speech but rather recitation, worn smooth by long use, and others take it up in pieces.

I catch a word I have not heard in a long time.

Vheris.

Your head turns towards the sound of it.

Only slightly, but it turns.

Vivianne: What are they saying?

Damion: Nothing you need to know.

Vivianne: It sounds like scripture. Why did you flinch?

Damion: I did not flinch.

Vivianne: Damion. What was that word?

And then, from the dark end of the room, past the fire, a strained voice croaks like a door on a dry hinge.

Elsbeth: Leave him be. He has never had the stomach for this part.

She is very old.

Two of them help her out of the chair and she does not thank them for it. It is expected, this reverence. She slowly comes down the length of the room, her eyes fixed on me from the moment she rises.

Elsbeth: You have not changed.

Damion: I have not.

Elsbeth: I told them so, and they humour me. They think I am old and that my memory has gone soft.

She stops in front of me. She is a head and a half taller than she was, but it only takes me a moment to recognise her.

Damion: You were smaller.

Elsbeth: I was only seven.

Damion: You followed me the length of the valley and would not be sent home.

Elsbeth: You gave me your cloak and told me to stop.

Her body shakes with something close to a chuckle, but a sense of pity seems to permeate even that.

Elsbeth: I never did give it back.

Somewhere behind me a lamp gutters. And I can feel you, three feet to my left, calculating.

Vivianne: Seven years old?

Elsbeth: Seventy-one years ago this winter, Seer. I have seen him twice with my own eyes. Once as a child, and now.

Vivianne: And he has not changed?

Elsbeth: Not by a day. Not even by an hour.

You turn to me then, and I make myself meet it.

There is nothing left in your face of the woman who came down to my cell.

Vivianne: How old are you?

Damion: Vivianne…

Vivianne: No. You have spent this entire road telling me the truth carries a weight. I am asking you a question a child could answer. How old are you?

Damion: Older than the walls of your city.

Vivianne: That is not possible.

Damion: Vivianne.

Vivianne: No. The court says you cannot be killed but it is merely a story. It is a thing they say about a man they so desperately want buried and cannot hang. To save face–

Damion: It is not a story.

Vivianne: Then what are you?

I cannot.

Even now, my mouth will not shape it. I have said it aloud to you before, and I have watched what it does. There is no version of me brave enough to do it again.

Before I can respond, the old woman does it for me.

Elsbeth: He is what came down. And you, girl, are what came down with him.

Vivianne: Came down? I do not know what that means.

Elsbeth: No. You never do.

She is laying the words down in front of you like a headstone on a grave. Your hand goes to your wrist the way it has gone a hundred times since the gates.

Vivianne: Tell me.

Elsbeth: You have come to this hospice more times than our books can follow.

Damion: Stop this.

Elsbeth: He brings you up this road, and he carries you down it. It ends the way it always does.

Vivianne: Ends? I do not understand. Why would he carry me?

The old woman does not answer. She looks at me, that pity still there, drenching her gaze. From near the door, one of the younger ones speaks up. He has not knelt, instead stayed standing with his back to the wall.

Aldric: You should tell her the rest, Elsbeth. Tell her what he does after.