Oathbreaker: A Dark Fantasy Web Serial

I took in this new revelation for several minutes of silence, chewing it over along with all its implications. How had I not already guessed?

I might have said many things in that moment — something comforting, some tasteful insight. Instead, because I couldn’t quite get the thought out of my head I said, “so before she killed him, they, uh…”

Emma fixed me with a withering look. “Do I really need to spell it out for you?”

I held up a placating hand. “It doesn’t matter. You aren’t your great-grandmother.” Even still, I knew it did matter, at least some. Just as there are sacrosanct traditions concerning hospitality and the treatment of the dead, which can have dire repercussions if broken thanks to the magics placed over the land, what Emma revealed about her family’s deeds couldn’t simply be dismissed as a long-ago crime.

She’d been left a legacy of murder and betrayal, both done in the most intimate of circumstances. She’d literally been born of that betrayal. It wasn’t fair, or right, but it left a very real mark, like a wound in the world left to fester.

Astraea Carreon couldn’t have been much older than Emma at the time. Perhaps the stories of their house’s vileness weren’t so exaggerated.

“But I was raised by her get,” Emma said through clenched teeth. She closed her eyes then, breathing deep, and settled back into a hollow calm. “My grandmother, the daughter of Lady Astraea, told me that story for the first time when I was seven. She’d meant it as a lesson — our world might be built on pretty ideals of romance and chivalry, but it is all paint over a cracked canvas. Our history is a bloody march of one war after another. She once told me this: God did not want saints, She wanted an army. She called the Orleys fools for living in a dream, and applauded her mother’s ruthlessness.”

Emma inhaled sharply through her nose, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the bench with a quiet little thump.

I closed my eyes as a vivid memory struck me, a fragment of my frequent visions. We could have lived in a dream. What’s wrong with that?

I pushed her voice back down into my memories, where it belonged.

Emma’s eyes opened after a time and went to the stain-glass window dominating the far wall of the chapel. The storm had broken, and moonlight turned the Heir silver, causing Her outstretched arms to softly shine, making the horned crown on Her brow a wreath of starlight.

“Bitch,” Emma said, without emotion. “Why should I offer Her any of my prayers, when She’s the one who fashioned these curses?”

I winced. “I think you have enough to deal with without angering the Blessed Dead. You know they might be listening.”

The young noble shrugged and propped an arm up on the back of the bench. “I had a warrior literally out of the depths of Hell try to kill me today. I’m not scared of a few senile ghosts.”

Which brought up something else I did not understand. “You talk about Jon as though he were half a saint,” I said. “How did he end up in the Iron Hell, of all places?”

“Lady Nath told me it was my great-grandmother’s doing. She butchered his body with profane rites and cast his soul down where the Silver Lords of the Underworld couldn’t reach it, not with all their valkyries and shepherd ferrymen.”

A good way to get your entire dynasty cursed.

“And you and Nath… how did that happen?”

Emma shrugged again with one shoulder. She lifted one slippered foot to rest on the bench, wrapping her arms around her knee. “Not much of a story there. I met her in the woods near the manor. I thought her an elf, at first… indeed, she played the part of my faerie godmother. I began to suspect her to be more Fell than Fae, after she began to help me awaken my magic. She wanted me to embrace it, and I thought that’s what I wanted as well for a while. To be powerful.”

“Power can be freedom,” I agreed. “But it can also be a chain.”

“Oh, so poetic. You need more of a beard to make that look work, O’ Wise One.”

“What is it you do want?” I asked. “When all this is done, I mean.”

Emma stared at me a long moment, her expression unreadable. “She really didn’t say anything to you?”

“Who?” I asked, confused.

“Nath, of course. Who else?” Emma tch’d when I only gave her a blank look. “It doesn’t matter. This isn’t done, is it? You didn’t actually kill Orley.”

It was my turn to sigh. “That is true. I’m… still trying to decide what to do next. I assure you, though, I won’t depart until this is done.”

Emma only frowned, fixing her gaze on the floor.

“You should get some rest,” I said. “Hendry won’t heal faster because you’re fretting over him, and She won’t intervene no matter how much you try to bargain with Her.” I nodded to the window, and the goddess in it.

Emma flushed. “I wasn’t—”

“I’ve been sitting where you are now before,” I said quietly. “More than a few times.”

She snapped her mouth shut, caught between anger and embarrassment. Perhaps she didn’t hate Hendry Hunting so much as she claimed, after all.

Perhaps she wasn’t as villainous as she wanted to believe.

Finally, adopting her usual air of careless disdain, Emma shrugged. “Very well. This place reeks of tallow and dust, anyway.” She stood, adjusted her skirts, and walked out. Her steps were just a touch too brisk.

I turned my eyes back to the window, and the deity in it. After a while I said aloud, “did you really weave these curses?”

But, of course, She didn’t answer.

Scoffing, I stood to follow Emma out and find my own rest. I noticed a shadow seated near the door, candle-light dying on his gray garments. Ser Kross still wore his armor and cloak, still stained with ash and burn-marks from the fighting. His flint eyes stared at nothing.

“How much of that did you hear?” I asked him, stopping near where he sat.

“Not much,” the knight-exorcist said. “And I knew much of it already, to be honest. I did research on the history of House Carreon when I was assigned to this mission. It is good of you, to not cast more doubt on her mind. She’s had people treating her like a devil child her whole life.”

I shrugged. “Just speaking my mind.” I sat down next to him, settling in again and wincing. I kept finding new bruises every few minutes.

“I do apologize,” he said. “For back at the manor, what I suggested concerning the girl. It wasn’t my place.”

I made a dismissive gesture. “Honestly, Kross, after talking to her more I half think she’d let the priests cut her Art out of her. She seems to hate it more than half as much as everyone else.”

“Still, it wasn’t my place to suggest it. I gave you the wrong impression. I would not do such a thing to a child, not unless there were no other choice.”

I wasn’t sure I believed him. Still, it wasn’t an argument I cared to have then. “So, will he live? Hendry, I mean.”

“He is a strong lad,” Kross said. “And Lord Brenner’s clericon has some power. I think it’s that village healer who will end up making the difference, though. He had some training in the Continent, and their medicine is far more advanced than anything you have here in Urn. Your land is too reliant on the Auratic Arts.”

“You’re from Edaea?” I asked, not missing his use of your rather than our.

Kross didn’t answer at once. I got the distinct impression he hadn’t meant to reveal that detail. Then, spreading out his hands he said, “lives can take winding roads. But, no, I wasn’t born in this land.”

I turned my gaze to the window again. After a minute, I felt the man’s eye on me. I shifted, uncomfortable, because he’d been nearby earlier that day — near enough to hear what I’d said to Jon Orley, and the title I’d revealed to the Scorchknight.

Maybe he wouldn’t know what it meant. There are many executioners in the land, and my role was an old one, its story mostly only known to the Eld.

“You know,” he said, “I have often found that speaking of your troubles in places like this can be a sort of… unburdening. It was the same when you listened to the young lady.” He nodded to where Emma and I had been sitting. “She had troubles on her soul, and needed someone to hear them… God, the gods, a stranger who’d move on before long, didn’t matter. She only needed to know the words would go somewhere else, away from her. I’ve been used for the same purpose many times.”

I scoffed. “Are you asking me to give confession, father?”

“I am offering to hear it, if you wish.”

I closed my eyes, fighting down the bile I felt rising up in my throat. Still, a bit of that poison came out in my next words. “You want to hear my sins? You really want their weight on your mind?”

“I have born many sins,” Kross said quietly. “Those of others, and my own.”

He sat leaning forward, hands clasped over his knees, calm and immovable as marble. The very image of the Soldier of Faith, humble and slow to anger, devout and steady. A far cry from the gilded champions I remembered, both from my time in a House guard and with the Table. Still, he had something about him — a gravitas. Maybe just his invisible seraph, but I didn’t think it was all that.

I wondered if he’d still be comfortable sitting so near, if he’d still want to play the fatherly confidant, if he knew the full breadth of my sins.

Well, why not? Why should I care what he thought of me?

I did care. I’d once wanted to be him, or near enough.

My eyes went to the stained glass, to the Golden Queen who’d probably happily throw me into the fire with the rest of the wicked. After all, I’d gotten Her favorite killed, and I still dreamed about—

No. Kross wouldn’t have my dreams from me, those were mine alone. But the rest of it?

“It is sacrilege for you to share anything I say to you outside of this room,” I said. I didn’t make it a question.

Kross bowed his head. “Yes.”

Well, that angel on his shoulder would probably already know the worst bits. It, too, was Onsolain. Maybe it had already whispered into the holy knight’s ear, telling him who I was, what I’d done.

Part of me wanted to talk, to unburden myself, as he put it. May as well be honest, and stop making excuses.

“Fine then,” I leant back and threw one arm casually over the back of the bench. “I’m game. You want to know who I am, Ser Kross? You want to know what I’ve done? Then I’ll tell you.”

I fell quiet then, gathering my thoughts. Kross remained a silent presence at my side, patient as can be. It took me many minutes to force myself to speak.

“I was a knight. No, damn, that’s a bad place to start.”

I am not so eloquent a storyteller as Emma Carreon. It took me some time to find the mark of my tale.

“I wasn’t born a lord. My father was a clerk in the employ of a provincial lord, a baron. Still is, maybe, though he’s got to be, oh…” I rubbed at my chin, working out the math. “An old man, if he’s still alive. I haven’t been home in a lifetime.” I shrugged, then leaned forward to clasp my hands over my knees. Kross remained silent, patient as trees, hanging on every word.

“I never had much of a head for numbers, or letters. Oh, my da’ tried to teach me sure enough, but I was more interested in my mother’s tales. She was a commoner too, worked as a seamstress in the castle same as Da’, and she loved talking about knights and heroes, wizards and elves. My sister and I used to listen to her for hours, sitting nearby while she wove.”

I’d slipped into my homeland’s accent for the first time in nearly fifteen years, without realizing it. Funny, how that sort of thing sticks. Especially since my father had hated it, and tried his best to lecture it out of us — he’d been from the north, from the cities. But my mother had raised me, and she’d had that Dalesteader lilt. Talking about her, I could almost hear the music of her voice again. I closed my eyes, listening to those memories, smiling softly.

“I didn’t have a very good impression of lords and knights as a lad. The lord was a greedy man who resented his betters, and his country was poor. His relatives bickered, and his men-at-arms, well…” I snorted. “They’d have been a real group of bastards if they hadn’t had such a terminal case of the sloth.”

“The baron had bad luck with children. His eldest son was a cowardly, sickly brat. Not a good look for a Dale Fiefdom — close as we are to Briarland, they value skill at arms highly in that country. As for me, well, I grew fast, and I didn’t have much to say compared to the rest of my family. Always preferred listening to talking, and everyone else always has so much to say anyroad. Most people got to thinking I was simple — big lad even at thirteen, quiet all the time? You know how children can be, and adults too. To be fair, I could — can — be slow of wit.”

“You were bullied?” Kross hardly seemed to believe it, looking at me with all my scars and muscle.

I scoffed. “I was mocked, sure, disregarded, ignored… but I was strong, even then. I ended up training with the baron’s sons at my father’s recommendation, mostly so they had someone big and tough to swing at. I didn’t mind much, though it’s a hard thing for a boy to realize his own father thinks he’s an idiot. Especially when his father’s considered the smartest man in the fiefdom.”

“And yet, from these humble roots, you became a knight?” Ser Kross studied me with searching gray eyes, as though trying to see into the fabric of my story, trace its threads. “Not just a knight, but a sorcerer, the bearer of powerful artifacts, even a loremaster.”

“Loremaster!” I chortled. “I know enough to understand what sort of nasty bastard wants to crack my skull, and how I can crack theirs harder. But no, I imagine Da’ wouldn’t think much of my learning, even now. He thought little of soldiers. Didn’t stop him from trying to make me one — he was just as ambitious as the baron, in his own way.”

“So you became one of this feudal lord’s shieldbearers?” Kross asked.

I shook my head. “Nah. Maybe I might’ve been, but fate, or some evil luck, had other plans.”

“What happened?” Ser Kross asked, when I fell silent. Perhaps he wasn’t so perfectly patient, after all. To be fair, I’d lapsed into a long silence several times already. I hadn’t talked about any of this in…

I hadn’t talked about any of this. Not ever. Not to anyone, except for…

I sighed, refocusing on my thread. “Some people showed up in the fief. Refugees. One of them happened to be a queen.”

***

“Her name was Rosanna.”

The lance of nostalgia, pain, resentment, and fondness that went through me then is difficult to describe. Just uttering a name can bring back such a tide of emotions, of recollection, and I’d avoided saying this one a long time, even thinking it, knowing to do so would stab at old wounds. If Kross noticed the tightness in my voice as I continued, he didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow.

“Her family ruled a small but powerful realm in the heartlands, until her relatives banded together and usurped the House. Her parents were murdered, and she had to flee her home with just a few servants. There were people hunting her, and she was desperate for allies. She ended up finding Lord Gilles Herder and his household. Not quite the court of heroes she’d been searching for, I imagine.”

I smiled at the memory, of that raven-haired girl striding through the dingy halls of the Herdhold like some shadowy empress, face etched with mild concern at what she saw.

“She’d fled her homeland and needed refuge. More than that, she needed champions to help her fight her uncles. Lord Gilles, of course, saw an opportunity. He wanted influence, prestige, and he had two options — turn the lost princess over to her enemies and get some meager reward, or gamble on helping her reclaim her realm and earn a spot in history. Honestly, it shocked me when the old codger chose to help her.”

“Course, Rose didn’t have much of a pick of able companions in the Herder fief. Lord Gilles’s son was no warrior, and he had few knights of any worth. So, no Fellowship of heroes for this quest. Gilles Herder knew his opportunity to make something of himself would turn to dust if the princess slipped his grasp and found more competent help. Instead, he and my father cooked up a scheme. Can you guess it?”

I met Ser Kross’s eyes. He thought for a moment, then smiled. “Ah. They offered you.”

“They passed me off as a Herder, aye. A bastard, to explain why I didn’t commingle with my siblings too intimately. But I could fight, and that’s what the refugee princess really needed. She was skeptical — Rose was never a fool — but she didn’t have many options.”

“And how did young Alken feel about this honor?” Ser Kross asked.

“I knew it for what it was,” I said. “Whole castle might have thought of me as the head clerk’s simpleton son, but I paid attention. I heard my father’s conversations with the baron, and I knew what they intended, the debt they planned to hold over this teenage queenling who’d stumbled into their care. But, at the time, I hardly cared. All I knew was that I had an opportunity to make something of myself, to get out of that place, and see the world. I believed I could be a true knight, like in my mother’s stories, false pretenses or no. I could help Rosanna reclaim her throne, earn her respect, be good at something. I was already good at fighting, so why not?”

“And then?” Kross prompted me, when I lapsed again.

I looked down at my hands, trying not to sink into the memories. It felt like piloting a leaking raft on tumultuous waters, to look into those depths without letting them drag me down into them.

“We won,” I said, almost whispering. “I beat them all. Rose’s uncles, their soldiers, all their assassins. I won every fight, and before I knew it the girl at my side had become a young woman, and then a queen. And I became a goddamn champion. I had help, of course. There was this mage, Lias… I’d have died a hundred times over without him. Point is, we did it. Somehow, I’d gone from being the commonborn son of a backwater castle clerk, to the First Sword of a High House.”

I closed my eyes. “It was like a dream, a’times. And a nightmare. War isn’t a pretty thing, no matter the stories. There were times I loved fighting — whenever I faced another champion, battled them with sword in hand in fair circumstances, I shone. But Rosanna fought to keep hold of a realm at war, surrounded by enemies and opportunists, unable to trust any of her allies or courtiers, and more often than not I felt more like a butcher. And she could be ruthless, my queen. She’d seen dark things, and embraced some of that cruelty.”

She had a lot in common with Emma, now I thought about it.

“They called me Rosanna’s Sword, when they wanted to be pretty. They called me Rosanna’s Headsman, when they wanted to be honest. And, all the while, I kept wanting to believe that dream — that I could be an Icon of Chivalry, a knight out of some story. But the world is a cruel place, and House politics are a gory business. I…” I swallowed. “I felt alone. Rosanna had to be a leader, and Lias kept getting more lost in his art, and I kept waiting for that day when I’d wake up and find that things were as I wanted them to be. I wanted to be part of some fair court of heroes, to believe all the compromises and ugliness weren’t just how things are.”

Kross’s eyes narrowed. “You did not gain Sacred Aura as a petty queen’s champion.”

“No.” I unclasped my hands and rested them palm down on my knees, bracing myself for what came next. “Rose had too many enemies, and a realm too wounded to keep intact alone. The Recusants were growing in power, looking for any vulnerable conquest, and her own allies were hungry for advantage. You can’t believe all the assassination attempts me and Lias fouled, all the aristos and opportunists we had to cow.”

I smiled. Not all those memories were bad. Sometimes, things could even be fun.

“But Rose had less and less use for an able sword at her side. She needed power. And there is one sure way in Urn, leastways back then, to elevate your status as an Urnic Lord. There was one thing she could do that would leave all those sworn to the Faith unable to touch her.”

I stared up at the window once more, meeting the silver eyes of the Heir. “Every great lord in this land has the right to nominate a champion for the Alder Table.”

Ser Kross went very still. “You…” his voice had fallen into a breathy hush. “You were one of the Archon’s own knights?”

I spoke through bared teeth. “Yes.”

“So, this sin you speak of…” Kross leaned forward, his expression grave. “It is the burning of the Blessed Country, your failure to protect it?”

I let out a bark of laughter, the sound a whip crack against the chapel walls. “If only it were just that. If only it were just that, Kross. No, simple failure wasn’t my sin, not my only one anyway. All the Table shares that burden, and a burden shared can be shouldered. No, you know what my sin was?”

I stood, beginning to pace. My boots clicked on stone, echoing off the chapel walls. Kross remained seated, gray eyes following me.

“I had everything. You know what I might have been if I’d stayed home? A thug. My father’s man, a brute he could loan out to the baron to intimidate farmers, or guard investments. I’d been born from nothing, and I became a knight, a champion, confidant to a goring queen. I was given honors, allowed to sit at a council of the land’s greatest heroes, given access to magics and secret lore usually reserved for fucking kings!”

I jabbed a finger at the window. “I was given a share of Her own damned light! And I…”

I clutched the hand to my chest, taking a deep breath to calm myself. I’d nearly been shouting. “I was miserable. I felt so alone. I could cope when I’d been at my queen’s side, she knew me, so did Lias — they were my friends, like a brother and a sister to me… but as one of the Table I felt like a fraud. I felt adrift, lost in this swirl of lore and legend and godsbedamned politics. And I had Rose’s expectations on my shoulders, her whole realm’s expectations. I was their First Sword, their voice to the Archon… and it scared me.”

My display of emotion washed off Ser Kross as though he were a seaside cliff. He spread his hands out, still seated. “Such feelings are not uncommon, nor are they evil. Kings and emperors are often lonely, Alken.”

“That’s not the point.” I shook my head. “That is not my sin.”

“You keep toeing around it.” Kross’s expression and voice hardened. “Tell me, Alken. What is your sin?”

For a moment, I dipped beneath the surface of the water. A memory took me.

None of this makes any sense, Dei.

I know. I know, Alken, but you have to believe me, it is all true, and we can stop it.

I still don’t understand any of this. It all sounds like madness.

…

Dei?

I didn’t want to do it this way. I didn’t want you to…

I remember holding her, concerned. I remember the feel of her breath on my neck as she whispered to me, her voice the barest whisper.

There’s something you need to know, something I need to… I thought I had more time.

I’m here. I’m listening. Just talk to me.

I remember my confusion. My concern. I remember what she’d told me swirling in my mind, but I couldn’t wrap my head around it. It was all too big. All I could do was hold her, brush her pale hair, and try to decide what to do, what to believe.

Perhaps my father had been right about me. Just a fool, too slow-witted to grasp what’s right in front of me.

I need to show you something. You need to promise me, before I do, that you will listen. And… you have to know that I do love you. That wasn’t a lie.

I remember how my blood had run cold at those words. I didn’t like where they might lead, what they implied.

Everything you’re telling me, about the other knights, the king… how do you know all this?

…I will show you.

My pacing brought me to the holy basin in the chapel’s center. It still held some blessed water, cast into silver in the moonlight. It showed me my tired face, my unkempt copper hair, the four long scars over my left eye. I ran my fingers over them, feeling the prickle of heat in the old wounds that never truly faded.

“My sin…” I turned to face Kross, meeting his steady eyes. “I knew what the other knights were planning. I knew war and chaos were about to break out. I could have stopped it. And I didn’t. I didn’t do anything, because I believed it was all a lie.”

“The Fall is my fault.”