‘woop.’
The Watcher spoke, his thin breath caught upon the night air with a pause of caution.
Words, he knew, had power. There was a greater dominion to the spoken word than a human mind could fathom; the circle chants of Den Helden that are said to turn iron into gold, the legends of Death’s voice that still echoes through the jungles of Illos. Story becomes passed on as truth, Truth becomes passed on as story.
As a boy, The Watcher had known that he had been blessed by the occult. Cats would pause in their prowl so that he may not be crossed; circled ravens would craw and squawk, fleeing their broodsome gatherings as The Watcher’s presence became more foreboding than the death bird itself.
He was absolute, a tickling malice locked behind an unblinking gaze.
He had felt the call of the voiceless one before knowing its whisper.
In earnest days long past, The Watcher had been taken on as a trainee within the Highwayman’s Guild in distant Stallinger. There, the young boy was encouraged to learn, to hone his skills as a Highwayman, but the slow presence of time within those lonely nights was soon shattered by a voice of wailsome woe.
It was quiet on that night. Darkness hung along the edges of shadow as the candlelit library lay circumspect and still. This was a place of history; a hushed solemnity filled the chambers of an order so ancient and proud.
Wandering into the depths of stolen voice, the boy was drawn towards a secret stone, one miss-rendered into the brickwork of an antechamber forlorn. He had thought of the library as a fowl place during his time at the guild; it was dust ridden and obfuscating in its own smug knowledge. There was a misplaced reverence there, a silence that seemed all too self-important. The dirt and dust would one day swallow that library, it would consume that whole guild so utterly that not even a skeleton of its foundations may remain; knowledge should be spoken, given voice, not hidden behind folliesome tradition.
There was a no dust upon the floor of the antechamber. Only fools would have missed the chalk-line along the edge of this wall, a draft that could never be, a librarian thinking themselves to be clever.
The boy knew that hidden chambers were common within the Highwayman’s guild, but to find one undocumented, to find one that failed to adhere to the Lockey’s numbering system*, this was a door that was designed to be forgotten.
Pushing upon the stone, the young Watcher felt the wall shift inward; silent and drawing, the air was pulled much like the squall that sweeps across a dead moor, its breath ancient and ragged.
A single book, lay in the centre of the room, it was chained, lashed to a dais just smaller than the diminutive confines of its diminutive holding.
This was a hidden place. Four inscriptions of four languages were each carved upon the walls of this cell, each begging that the lock should forever remain fastened.
The boy craved the knowledge of this book, to release its voice. But the chains were unbroken, the lock without keyhole.
There was a whisper in this room, silent words dripped into his thoughts, and they promised power, sight beyond sight. They spoke of a one who knew the language of locks. A girl, her name now lost, one that could see past the traps of a master locksmith, one that could free the voiceless whisper.
She was within the Guild, a student much like the boy.
She was the first to be taken. The lock falling to the floor, a shadowed hand reaching from the pages.
But no matter.
True sight unfurled before The Watcher in that moment.
He had unravelled his old life in service of the voiceless one and in return had been told the secrets of the veil, he knew of the true stiches that held the world together, so easy to pluck, so easy to unstitch, so fragile that with one loose thread his master had returned into the world.
Through these whispers, The Watcher had travelled to Lundra. He had walked through the beauty of Meadow Loch and he had seen decay beneath the fields of flowers. There was corruption there that was soon to come. The death, the shadow.
He would bring this into the world.
‘woop,’ The Watcher said again, now believing the scrawl to be a figment of circumstance rather than a message arcane.
The voiceless one was much more subtle a teller of secrets than marking “woop” on a wall above a fireplace, there was a grace to his silken messages, a subtly that was only able to be decoded by a true believer in the fold
woop was an outlier. There was nothing behind woop.
Touching the brick chimney of the hearth, The Watcher felt the roughly scrawled coal beneath his fingers and contemplated what this message could mean.
‘Are you there?’ he whispered to his master and receiving only silence as a reply, ‘No, not your voice.’ The Watcher reached into his robe and withdrew a grey disc of stone, an eye carved upon its datum flickered. Through these stones, a dead order was now reconnected.
Placing the stone to his eye, The Watcher felt the world darken. He breathed in and then he saw.
~
Rain fell in rolled sheets, windless and compact.
Alice Cuttler Squeezed the pretty rock in her bloody palm and felt a strange warmth despite the cold of the night air and rain.
She had never been given a present before.
Blake, who kept the voices silent, Blake whose calm settled that urge to break, to kill, he would give her things, but never were they presents.
They had stolen a wagon from the moss-covered city and were travelling to the one of bridges below. They had done this many times, stolen from once city and sold in another. But this time she had been given a present.
‘Take this.’ The tall one with the scared hands had said. So gently had he placed two stones into her hand. Small grey discs, much like a coin, a spirally eye carved deeply on one side. He smiled as he had given them to Alice, ‘they’re very pretty.’ he said without needing to add anything more.
The small one was quiet in that moment; Blake had placed a crossbow to his forehead and the words had left. Like a tap, one turn and his dribbling voice was cut off.
It was a good day.
But the grey lady, the fighter in a police’s uniform, she had broken their nice new cart and had taken away Blake to Dormir’s judgment. Alice would find the grey lady. She had to pay.
Looking at the stone, all covered in silky blood, Alice saw two red lines pointing away into the moorland. A tug, a small thread leading away in two directions.
‘Which to follow?’ said Alice, pulling at the lines as if they were a bow string.
Light turned across the darkness of the field below. The amble of a horse, wheels crunching along the gravel road carved into the dale just below where Alice sat.
Leaping from the muddy earth, Alice skidded down the wet grass, tumbling onto the road before the cart could pass. Sodden and beaten, Alice waved frantically and bid for the cart to stop, only a heartless Lundrian could pass a walker in rain such as this.
‘Miss? By Lenith you look terrible. What’s happened?’
Pulling to a stop the man climbed from his wagon and tried to peer at the stranger beyond the gloom of the night; he imagined that a more bedraggled creature was unlikely to be seen. Reaching out to offer injured girl a hand of compassion, the man felt a pain suddenly burst into his outstretched side, a darkness then congregate upon the edges of his vision.
Folding, breathless and woozy, the man sunk to the puddle-stricken road and felt cold for the last time in his life.
‘Bye-bye silly man.’ Alice cooed as he stepped up into the cart and pulled a sail cloth tarp over her head so that the rain drummed all noisily upon it. She had only been in this rainy place for a few years and the unguarded nature of its people still delighted her. They would stop for a person; they would offer to help. Blake was right that this country would be much more fun than Stallinger.
Kicking at the horse, Alice wiped new blood on the stone and saw the two strings stretch out to the horizon again. Which string to follow, she thought as the cart began its lonely way along the road once again. Flicking the stone into the air, Alice let fate pick what side it should fall, and fate was only too happy to oblige.
~
Peter heard the contented crackle of a fire well embered and sated of wood.
There was a timeless smell to the room that the farmer had only once known when he had travelled to Sandulk as a boy. He remembered the ancient oak tree that grew in the heart of the city, the beaten stone, its history.
Opening his eyes, Peter Walters looked at a room that he could not remember and felt as though something very important was missing.
It was a study. Dusty carpets were strewn across the stone floor as walls of books encompassed the walls and then faded away into darkness. It seemed to Peter that this must be a candle maker’s workshop. There were hundreds of candles, all shaped in different ways and of ambling colour, each one upon every shelf, some used and many yet to be trimmed. Seeing that none were lit, Peter patted at his pockets in hope of a match so that the room may be made somewhat lighter.
Everything felt singular here. It was as though this room existed outside the confines of a house, outside the confines of a town. Standing from the chair, Peter walked about the study until he found a desk within the mess of maps, candles and ledgers.
‘Peter Walter, a farmer of peat,’ the warm voice of an old man rasped from behind a desk. The small man held a simple candle aloft, as if appraising it. Its wick was burning meekly.
‘It’s so sad to see a kindness end with my appearance. I assume you’re not much for religion?’ placing the candle down with deliberate care, the god of Death, Dormir, removed his wire glasses and looked at his guest more fully.
‘No,’ Peter replied, unsure of how he had come to the room, ‘I’ve prayed to Lenith some, most do. But my folks weren’t much for towns or reading, and I’ve not wanted for anything other than the farm.’
Peter was scared. His life had been so simple but now everything felt like it had stopped. He was in a place that he’d never known and now he could not help but speak with honesty. It felt as though the thoughts of his heart were free here. That he was unguarded.
Dormir sighed, no one deserved what this man had suffered.
‘Well, think of this as a place of travel, a place where life is considered, and where it can be directed to go next.’
‘Like a wagon station?’ Peter replied.
‘Yes, just the place.’ laughed Dormir, a warmth filled the study and the bright eyes of the old god flickered merrily in the light of the candle before him.
‘Peter, you’ve been a good man, unremarkable in action, but remarkable in how softly you have walked upon the world. And I believe that it is to the world which you should return. A soul can become so many new things, yours should remain unchanged.’
‘I’m not sure I follow.’ said Peter, feeling that something final had been reached and was unable to define what it was.
‘You need not. Just return into world and be you. Oh, and Peter,’ Dormir stood from his desk and drew the candle up as if it were a child, ‘travel. See as much of Lamplight as you can.’
Snuffing the flame, Dormir then neatened the candle’s wick between his finders and returned it to a shelf behind his desk. It was difficult to judge a person so judgeless as Peter Walter, life should be kinder to these people.
Dormir tutted distant thoughts to himself as he returned to his desk and ignited another candle for judgment.
But it would scarcely be a life then, would it?
—
*Adaptable and easy to obscure, Lockey’s numbering system is a collection of hidden marks and symbols that has been accepted as a standard lingua franca for the labelling of secret doors and pit traps.
J. McCray
2023
Sunday Short Stories 