Chapter One: Part Three

Continued from Chapter One: Part Two found here: http://lithnmark.blogspot.com/2011/11/chapter-one-part-two.html

Trilby closed the door as she walked into the room. She went straight to a rocking chair near the fire. Her grandmother had sat in that chair. When she’d sat, Trilby took a deep breath, relieved to be able to sit. Twig, watching her, superimposed another scene on her. A woman in that chair, in that dress, with that hair, sitting with her fingers wound together, staring out the window. The light in the memory had the dim of midnight moonlight.

Noticing Twig’s gaze on her, Trilby smiled. “Would you be so kind as to bring me a cup of tea?” she said. “This is hers,” Trilby’s mother gestured at a cup of tea already prepared. Twig took the tea up in both his hands, the corpse-white skin of them exposed to sight. He’d taken off the black leather gloves he’d been wearing which had belonged to the Holy Assassin. He’d gotten all of his clothes from the Holy Assassin. The Assassin had stopped needing them.

“Are you a monk? Is that where you’ve been all this time?” Trilby asked. It was a reasonable question to ask. He wore the black leather, covered in mismatched buckles, and the voluminous black cloak that belonged to the Holy Assassins, the Acolytes of Ferryman. The Holy Assassins had been one of the most common and respected religious monastic orders since times of legend. Although no two Holy Assassins wore exactly the same black leather suit the cloak and the overall impression was common enough that they were easily recognized wherever they went. They had been taken from a Holy Assassin a few days earlier. Twig had no clothes of his own to wear. He had needed the clothes. The Assassin no longer needed them anyway.

The sleeves of the leather shirt covered parts of the backs of his hands. The ends were soft and suede with age. As he handed Trilby her tea he saw on one of the sleeves a brown bloodstain, hardly visible on the black leather. He knew it was fresh. Looking up at her face he saw that Trilby had her eyes on his, like the well-bred lady he was glad to see she was. He looked at people’s hands.

When she had taken her tea from him Twig took his hands away hastily. He held the hem of the cloak sleeves to hide his hands and the bloodstains.

“No. I am not a Holy Assassin,” Twig said, turning from Trilby.

“Where have you been, then?” Trilby asked.

“I do not know,” Twig said. “I believe have been asleep.”

“Asleep for forty years?” Trilby said, her eyebrows rising in surprise.

“If it has been forty years since I left then I have been asleep for forty years.”

“You don’t know where?”

Twig shook his head. He knew nothing about it. On the day he and the rest of the Zombie Corps graduated from boot camp—Camp Dradel far in the north, the only Zombie Corps boot camp in the world--they had gathered for parade in one of the warehouses. After a speech from Geving, the mastermind behind the Zombie Corps project, Twig remembered a bitter smell. He remembered watching his comrades fall down around him while his body went limp. There had followed rushing, noisome dreams, with no reason in them and no rest to be had. Dreams that, apparently, had lasted for forty years.

He had then awakened in a blizzard, two days earlier. He survived in the blizzard. He did not know how, because he had awakened naked, at the base of a cliff. For hours after that he wandered until he felt some warmth in the distance. It turned out to be a fire and four men—four Holy Assassins.

The Holy Assassins were allies of the Zombie Corps—the Ferryman, the god of death and the lord to which the Holy Assassins swore allegiance, had been the god who had blessed the Zombie Corps as well.

Holy Assassins never yield except to their lord and master, Death himself. Their methods were diverse and their training intense. The Zombies stole many of the techniques used by the Holy Assassins. Twig knew their methods. He knew when he snuck up on them that, if he saw four at camp, at least three others concealed themselves in the forest nearby to keep watch on the camp. They caught sight of him, which he had supposed would not matter. They were allies, and he supposed that making himself visible would save him.

It did not. He heard whistles from the Holy Assassins on watch and the Assassins in camp disappeared in a cloud from smoke pellets, their fire extinguished. It was what they would do if they saw an enemy approach. Rather than wait and be forced to defend himself in the confusion he ran away. That ought to have been enough. The Holy Assassins hunted high profile targets—princes and warlords. As a foot soldier, Twig knew of no reason to attract their attention.

But they pursued him. For the rest of the night and through the next day the Holy Assassins hunted him unshakably through the hills. When he thought he had evaded them two would appear in his path, practically tripping him. When he had found a hiding place he would hear their whistles, signaling to the others that they had found Twig’s trail, and he would be on the move again. For hours he stayed only barely ahead of them. Then he decided to let them catch him. He had announced his identity. From the honesty in their open faces, he knew the recognized his name, the name of the Zombie Corps. They wanted him, and dead. They never took hostages.

Holy Assassins never yield except to Death himself.

“I woke not far from here,” Twig said to Trilby. He considered making some lie about how he had obtained the Holy Assassin clothes—say something clean and comforting, like that they had been given to him or that he had found them somewhere. He could not bring himself to say anything of the kind. Instead he merely looked at Trilby, his expression completely blank, and hoped she’d stop asking questions. Somehow he preferred hiding that seven Assassins were laying on a wide stone atop a hill, their bones to be picked clean by birds and animals. It was an old tradition sometimes used by his family. Lords of Lithnmark had often been left exposed, their flesh contributing to the continuation of things and then their bones buried in the family cairn. It was the most respectful way that he could leave the bodies of the Assassins in the time he had.

“And you chose to come straight to my home?” Trilby’s mother said, her tone harsh. Twig turned to meet her annoyed gaze.

“Mother, you haven’t introduced yourself to our guest,” Trilby said.

“He may call me Widow Lockwood,” she said. Widow Lockwood—an old woman’s name—the name of a matriarch. Twig heard a whole story in that name, but a story without any middle. A childhood with an incomplete family during a cold war, then a man who came in and out of the story, leaving his name and his daughter behind. Twig played no part in it. The knowledge of it was too much to feel.

“Why have you come here?” Widow Lockwood asked. “Did you expect to find anything here? Anything at all?”

Twig had nothing to say. The moment stretched. Trilby rocked her chair slowly.

“You remain silent,” Widow Lockwood said. Her mouth curled, between a sneer and a grimace. “You are here, forty years wrong, here at all, and you remain silent.” Twig scratched his cheek and averted his eyes from hers; cold and sharp as they were he wished to avoid them. “Gods in hell, you’re an ass,” she said, quiet but her voice cracked. “Say something. I need something from you—lords of chaos and stillness,” she swore, “I need something from you.”

After these revelations, all he could think that remained was the War. The Covenant Army was disbanded, Widow Lockwood had said. The Zombie Corps was missing. He had come back to this house because he wanted to know his family. But they were gone.

All that remained was the War.

“The War,” he began. She interrupted him.

“The War is over,” she said. “It has been over for more than a decade. The wrong side won. The wrong side always wins.”

Twig wondered which side she had taken. He had no reason to think it had been his. There it was. The War had ended. He missed it. His training had been for nothing. The mess of a war that had so upset the fabrics of reality had come to some conclusion. It had been a wretched, twisted affair. People had rarely known who their allies were one day or who would die the next. It had been a bad time. And entirely without his aid, it had come to some conclusion or other.

A profound simplicity rose in him. Not a peaceful simplicity—he felt malcontent and ill at ease, as if he stood fastened to a rock on the coast and a hurricane had just breached the horizon. Still, with no lords to look to for orders and no war to join he could only feel simple.

He misliked the feeling—too pointless.

“I am sorry,” he said.

“For which part?” Widow Lockwood said. She stared at him, and he stared right back. She flinched first.

“I wish you would leave,” she said, her voice dropping and her eyes roving away from Twig. “You are not part of this place.” Twig stared at her cheek, not certain how to proceed.

“I will leave,” he said.

“Not immediately, of course,” Trilby protested. “We can’t throw him out on his ear. He must at least stay the night.”

“No. I will leave now,” Twig said. It was better if he left immediately. He could tell that. Widow Lockwood’s jaw clenched and her hand tightened on the wooden locket she had been fiddling with. Twig had sat for the image in the locket with Trilby’s grandmother. His hair and skin had been colored then, rather than black hair, wild around his white face.

“You’re sure?” Trilby said.

Twig nodded.

“But,” Trilby started. Widow Lockwood interrupted.

“Trilby, take him outside. He can have a horse, if any will carry him,” Widow Lockwood said, looking out the window. Trilby looked to her mother, seeming to decide whether any argument could be made. The set expression on Widow Lockwood’s faced, so limned in growing morning light from the window, denied contradiction.

Though she frowned while she did it, Trilby pushed herself up from her rocking chair and went toward the door. Twig followed.

Through the corner of his eye he watched Widow Lockwood open the wooden locket. She touched the carved image inside with the tips of her fingers.

Continued on December 1...

Chapter One: Part Two

Continued from Friday, November 25... (Chapter One: Part One found here: http://lithnmark.blogspot.com/2011/11/chapter-one-part-one.html)

The ruckus had summoned the men. The four of them stood nearby, their crossbows not quite raised to bear on Twig. Unsure about the situation, they kept at the ready.

“If he’s a ghost and all, what good’ll these do anyhow?” one of them muttered.

“You can’t see through him or ought. Can’t be a ghost no how,” another muttered.

They all looked to the woman on the porch for guidance. She walked to the edge of the porch, her crossbow also at the ready, but not pointed at Twig.

Twig inhaled. “My name is Twig Lithnmark,” he said.

“I know your name,” the woman said. “You were the lord of this manor.” Twig stood completely still, noting her use of the past tense. “What are you now?” the woman asked. “Are you a ghost? A demon? I can’t tell.”

Twig clutched his cloak around his shoulders and met her grey eyes. He didn’t know the answer to that question.

“Speak up,” she said. He gave the easiest answer.

“I am Twig Lithnmark of the Zombie Corps, a soldier in the Covenant Army Special Forces.”

“I knew all of that as well,” she said. “But the Covenant Army is disbanded and the Zombie Corps disappeared without a trace.”

News to Twig. He stood like a stone, not sure what else to do.

“Are the horses settled?” the young, red-haired woman asked one of the men. Everyone looked at her, holding the cat in front of her pregnant belly. “Well, I want to know,” she said.

The men glanced at the woman on the porch, asking for instructions. Twig kept his gaze on the redheaded young woman.

“Well, answer her,” the woman on the porch said.

“Aye, Mistress Trilby,” one of the men said. “Still on edge and all, but quiet for now. Won’t be happy till he’s gone,” he gestured with his crossbow at Twig. “When are you sending him away?”

“Can’t send him away if he’s a ghost—not how you’d send away a beggar,” one of the other men said in a hurried, hushed voice.

“Hold your tongue,” the red-headed woman, Trilby, said. “He is not a ghost. He’s a travel, and he’s clearly cold. We’re asking him in for a cup of tea before we do anything else.”

“Trilby,” the woman on the porch started in a stern voice.

“Mother, he is one, cold man. Let him come in and warm up,” Trilby stared her mother in the face. Her nostrils flared. The woman on the porch looked back at Twig, as if evaluating him as a threat to her person. After a few seconds of appraisal, she came to entirely the wrong conclusion because she turned and went into the house, muttering permission for him to come inside. As a trained strategist, Twig considered that a tactical error.

He did want to get out of the cold; though this woman, mother of Trilby who looked so familiar, frightened him. He feared who she might be. He didn’t want to know her name.

“Go about your chores,” Trilby told the men, still unsure where to point their crossbows. They stayed where they were. Rolling her eyes, Trilby looked Twig in the face. “You look rather sickly. Are you all right?”

“I do not know,” Twig replied. It was the truth. His joints all ached as if all his liquids had been replaced with coarse sand—his guts curled in on themselves with pains like hunger—the cold bit him down to his bones. He had felt the same for days without abatement. But it had grown no worse either. He was unsure how he was. He functioned higher than ever. Without once pausing to sleep or eat he had walked to the manor house over two days.

“You don’t know?” Trilby said. Twig shook his head. “That’s strange.”

“It is strange,” he said.

“Hmm. You may know better after a cup of tea. Come inside with me,” Trilby walked up the stone steps to the porch and into the tall double-doors of dark wood.

“You are open with your hospitality,” Twig said, his tone flat. She seemed too trusting to him. He feared that she misunderstood the situation.

“Because you don’t deserve our hospitality?” she said, looking at him from just outside the door. “Or maybe you think we should be more cautious of a stranger. But you are not a stranger.” Twig remained silent, looking at her with eyes unblinking. “You are my grandfather. I know your face.”

Like her mother, Trilby looked hard at Twig for a moment. Trilby’s attitude lacked all the suspicion of her mother’s and made it up with great curiosity.

“It is strange,” Trilby said. “Are you coming? We’re letting the cold in.”

She went into the house. Twig stayed where he was, hesitant to follow. He would not have let such a one as himself into his own house. The men around him moved away as Trilby went in, and the older of the four muttered at Twig’s back, “Get along—the lady told you to go in. Don’t you get comfy, mind. I’ll be in not long after to keep an eye on you.”

Twig looked around at the man, who went into the stables without looking back. Though he didn’t know the man, Twig could tell he cared about Trilby and her mother. That comforted him. Walking up the steps, Twig went into the house. The dark doors slammed behind him. Glancing back he saw the old woman, Hilda, had thrown the doors closed and dropped the bar to hold them shut. She glared at him then went through a small door that led into a servants’ passage to the kitchens. The front hall where he stood had two torches in sconces on the walls and seven candles giving it nearly no illumination, leaving it shadowy and chilly. Twig  could see every crack in every grey stone in the walls and floor anyway. His eyes needed very little light.

“This way, please,” Trilby said. She set the cat down and rested a hand on top of her belly. “Mother’s parlor is warmest.”

“I know,” Twig said.

“I suppose you do.” Trilby went past the buffet where all the seven candles in the hall sat in a candelabrum and two candlesticks and went through a small door behind a heavy tapestry of a butterfly. She held the tapestry open for Twig so he could go in first. He paused outside the door, looked into her face. Wariness shaped her eyes, but also curiosity. A twitch of a little smile curled her lips for a moment and disappeared as quickly.

Twig considered returning the smile. He memorized every little fleck in her eyes, scrutinized every pore in her young skin. He guessed her thoughts dwelt on his cold presence—read caution in the hand stiffly resting on top of her round belly. Twig listened for the baby’s heartbeat—the little pitter-pat skipped, like a surprise.

“Ooh,” she said introspectively, her eyes glazing over and a whimsy-filled smile on her lips. “He’s kicking.”

“She is kicking,” Twig said.

“She?” Trilby grinned at Twig. Twig nodded. It had to be a girl. He could tell by the way the heat in her blood moved through her veins. Ever-so-slightly lower than a boy. It was a new talent he’d gained: a hypersensitivity to heat, especially in blood. He knew not from whence the talent arose. “That’s nice. Ooh,” Trilby said again quietly. “Can we sit now?”

Twig turned from her and went through the partly open door into the parlor. This room stayed warm, being small the heat that became caught inside the wood-paneled parlor tended to stay. A fire flickered in the hearth at the end of the room and early, cloud-choked sunlight through the leaded windows in one wall lit the room. The woman from the porch, Trilby’s mother, sat at the heavy table in the middle of the parlor. A cup of tea in a delicate cup sat at her elbow and a tray of more tea and cakes sat on a corner of the table near the door Twig entered. Trilby’s mother stared at Twig, and fiddled with a large wooden locket on a brass chain. Twig knew the locket.

Continued on Tuesday, November 29...

Chapter One: Part One

Twig walked into the yard of the manor house. His footsteps lighted like dead leaves on the cold cobblestones—the brush of his black cloak on the ground made more noise than his footfalls and it sounded no louder than a breeze. Silent as a shadow he was, and yet his presence spooked the horses in the stables; something about him sent the dogs in the kennels under the kitchen whimpering and clawing, as if they’d smelled a wolf. Twig turned to leave—he’d rather have remained unnoticed. The noise of the animals brought people out of the grey stone manor house and the outbuildings. Armed with crossbows and torches, they began looking for the spook that had so upset the animals.

Six people emerged from the manor house and the outbuildings. That didn’t stop Twig from leaving. One of the women had bright red hair and a long green dress both of which he knew. In the dim he could not yet see her face. Her belly was round, big with child. The sight gladdened him. He had hoped to be home in time to see the child born. Perhaps he had not been gone as long as he thought.

Four of the people who’d emerged from the buildings were men. They shouted at each other about searching the grounds. “Go quiet them dogs!” the older of the four shouted at the youngest, who ran toward the kennels.

They had missed Twig so far. He was not sure why. The shadow of the stables fell across him, and the voluminous cloak he wore had been taken from the back of a Holy Assassin, so it may very well have some sort of enchantment on it, and he stood so very still. The young man who went to quiet the dogs ran with his face partly toward Twig.

Twig watched the woman in the green dress. She walked across the yard, her hair covering her face. Her name grew in his throat—he wanted to call to her. Halfway across the yard, she stopped to crouch and collect a cat that had run to her. The cat looked right at Twig, its hair on end, and it hissed. She followed the cat’s gaze. Twig saw her face; in seeing it, the name in his throat deflated and died. Her face was so like the face he knew, but more heart-shaped lips, a different nose, and different eyes—his own, icy-blue eyes in her face.

“Master Twig’s ghost!” a woman’s voice shrieked. The other person who had exited the house was an aged woman. She’d found a pitchfork, and now held it with the tines pointed at Twig, wide-eyed angry-fear on her face; a face he knew, but much younger. She was named Hilda. She should have been hardly more than a child.

“I am confused,” Twig said in a voice dry as dust.

“You’re confused?” said the voice of another person. Twig looked to the porch, where a tall woman stood just outside the doors of the grey stone manor house. Freckles peppered her sharp face, and her pale hair, in a long braid, had a little grey in it. She was beginning to age, though her face was still striking. She held a loaded crossbow.

“It’s Master Twig’s ghost, m’lady—I know it in my bones,” Hilda croaked, prodding the pitchfork toward Twig. “Long since died in some secretive place at war and come to haunt them that wanted him to stay forgot.”

“Go in the house, Hilda,” the woman on the porch said.

“We have to cast rites to protect us against witchcraft,” Hilda began arguing, staring intently at Twig, showing no sign of letting him go without being exorcised.

“Hilda! Do as I say. Go in the house. Make tea,” the woman on the porch said.

“Lady,” Hilda began.

“Hilda!” the woman on the porch wanted no more argument. Frowning, Hilda made a last jab at Twig and went into the house. She took her pitchfork with her.

To be continued in two days...