Chapter 15 #2
Henry’s face fell grim. “It wasn’t easy escaping the Watchmen.
Our homes were burned down, and our neighbors were slaughtered.
Children who Zara and I watched grow before our very eyes had laid dead on the ground on our very doorstep.
Reliving such horrors…will never be easy for either of us.
The least we wished to do was burden you and your sister with our past. Wellyn, too.
I imagine your father and mother felt the same way. ”
Anelize fell silent as they ventured the rest of the way until she saw a path that had become clear even buried beneath the snow.
A road that led into the heart of the Vedrans’ village.
She’d expected to see farms or cottages miles apart from each other.
Only there had to be at least a dozen homes before her all constructed around each other, surrounding a large well with a stone wall at the heart of it.
There were far more homes beyond that bled farther into the forest, more than she could have ever imagined.
As if the Forest of the Dead had once been a city all of its own.
The men appeared to know their way as they entered the village. Their shoulders tense as they looked around, as if waiting for any signs of danger nearby. Meanwhile, Anelize felt her heart in her throat the entire time. Feeling an oppressive weight fall on her.
As they walked past the cluster of homes, she noticed some of them had been burned down entirely while others appeared to be intact, until she peered through the shattered windows, finding empty beds and overturned furniture.
When she caught the first sight of dried blood splattered along the walls, she turned away and hurried after Aeric as he walked past her.
When they arrived at the heart of the village, they all stopped walking when they reached the well. Aeric turned toward her, his face indiscernible as he said, “Last chance to walk away.”
She frowned, then noticed Idris and Adan standing before the well. Their faces solemn, angry. Aeric watched her walk past him, toward them, and did not make a single move to approach them with her.
Adan slowly turned to face her when he heard her footsteps. “Do you know what happened here, twenty years ago?”
She nodded, albeit hesitantly.
“Do you know what they did with them after it was all done? The bodies.” A dark inky feeling settled into her bones as Idris turned to face her, his eyes distant.
“See for yourself,” Adan murmured before they stepped aside, waving a hand toward the well.
Every fiber of her being warned her against it. Screamed for her not to step up to the well and look down. She did anyway, despite knowing that what she saw would never be unseen again. It no less stole the air from her lungs.
Bones.
Those were bones. Hundreds upon hundreds, stacked together and strewn about. A labyrinth of bones of all sizes. This was no well. It was a pit meant for the dead. Opening her eyes to the horrible truth below them.
“What is all this?” she breathed out.
Adan’s voice was severe as he stared down into the chasm of remnants below. The light in his eyes swallowed by the night sky above them. Not even the full moon daring to touch him as it instead illuminated the ivory bones of the lives lost in this place.
“This is a graveyard. Used as a reminder to all Vedrans of the cost of opposing the king. They were the first examples, forever meant to be kept as they were. As they will always remain until we have all long since turned to dust. When do you think the burnings started?” When she didn’t answer he was surprisingly calm, not the least bit frustrated by her lack of response as he had been in the stables.
“After the king sent his men to hunt down the book and killed the Weaver to obtain it, they came here. The Vedrans hadn’t anticipated the attack, tucked away in their beds.
Ignorant to the destruction he had planned for them.
That didn’t stop our people from fighting back until the last Vedran was finally slain.
The one’s who hadn’t had the chance to run. ”
There was an unmistakable silence that echoed throughout the square. If she listened hard enough, she could almost hear the whistling winds around them take the form of screams before they faded away.
Adan’s hands closed into fists at his sides as he stared into the pit. There was disgust for what had been done to his people, but there was also sadness. A sadness that in no way matched the feeling she felt, for it was so much more. Grief, she realized.
Anelize looked to him, her voice much softer than she intended as she murmured, “You lived here with your brother. Didn’t you?”
Idris said, “Adan and I had never been very good at listening when we were told to do something. But we had been especially troublesome to our parents. They were far more patient than they should have been when it came to us. That night, rather than heading to bed, we decided to have a bit of fun outside. We wandered into the fields where we goaded each other into using our gifts to play. I’d managed to capture a snowball the size of my face before tossing it back at him ten times harder. ”
Adan gave a rare, fleeting smile at his brother’s words.
Anelize didn’t speak, didn’t bring herself to move. She feared if she did, then he’d revert back to being angry, throwing insults at her for not knowing the meaning of his suffering. Still, she wanted to know.
Adan’s smile wilted as he stared into the pit.
“We’d been out there for mere moments before we heard the screams. The clashing of the swords.
It had taken entirely too long to return, and when we did, it had been as though a storm had swept over our village.
The bodies had littered the ground we had walked upon mere hours ago without a care in the world.
Watchmen were everywhere we looked as we hid by the crates behind one of the houses. ”
She shivered as a wind passed over them, but Adan and Idris didn’t move.
“We hurried to our home and that was when we saw them. Our parents. Our father was dead before we arrived, his body laying mere feet away from the door. And our mother…she had seen us as they dragged her out onto the street. They hadn’t appeared nearly as eager to kill her yet.
They taunted her for the destruction they brought upon us all, our so-called ‘allies.’” Adan scoffed on a broken sound.
“I wanted to fight, to do something to stop them, but Idris was always the calmer of the two of us. More sensible. If it hadn’t been for him, I’m sure my bones would be down there too along with our parents. ”
Idris placed a hand upon his shoulder.
“Perhaps that had been why she’d done what she had, when she saw the fire in our eyes to fight.
To protect us, she cast out her power and killed four of them with a single swipe of her hand, stopping their hearts as easy as breathing.
Screaming as she told us to run. Then more Watchmen were upon her. ”
Her eyes stung. The words…there were no words to say. No way to ease the pain that was so clearly written on their faces.
To think that so many had suffered for no reason, none. Meaningless deaths that could have been avoided if not for the greed of one man who wanted power above all else. The Weaver and her greed.
“After that we spent a lot of time hiding in barns, stables, freezing ourselves in alleyways. We were orphans on the streets of Elvir for years. Hiding anywhere the Watchmen wouldn’t think to look.
Until Henry found us searching for scraps behind his tavern one day.
I can only imagine the sight of us then.
He took us in, gave us a haven. If not for him and Zara, for the remaining Vedrans that refused to be torn down and erased, then I have no doubt in my mind that we would have been. Sooner or later.”
Adan turned to face her with an expression she had never seen before, and she tensed.
“Now you know. The price of refusing to fight is this. Survival is one thing, but don’t think that the Watchmen won’t come into the city and do as they did here twenty years ago, Anya.
For them, it is as easy as breathing. And they will always go after the weak ones first. You.
Your sister. Everyone. Then they’ll do as they did here and toss your bodies into a pit.
” He made to walk past her, stopping only long enough to say, “Make your choice, but ensure it counts for something.”
Before she could say anything, the sound of rasping labored breathing filled her ears from somewhere down the road, among the abandoned homes. A chill ran down her spine as they all tensed. Then the scent of rotting flesh filled her nose, the air.
“Get behind me,” Aeric ordered as he suddenly stepped in front of her, his hand gripping her arm.
Doing as he said, she heard metal singing as Adan unsheathed his swords. Idris doing the same. Even Henry. All of them gathering around her as they waited, listened.
The sound of a distant shriek somewhere else made them all startle as they looked toward the shadows around them. Only to find empty streets. Silence suddenly fell, deafening in their anticipation to see what foul creature would emerge to devour them. Long seconds passed into slow crawling minutes.
Then, a shadowed figure dressed in torn clothes slowly emerged from the alley to their left.
Looming over them, nearly as tall as one of the oak trees surrounding them.
A grotesque hunched figure peered through long dark hair, revealing two gaping holes where once there had been eyes and a gaping maw, its teeth blackened by the rot.
Its breathing was labored, making her eyes water as the smell became unbearable.