Chapter Twenty-Six - The Dead

  53rd Day of Spring - Year 1758 of the Golden Era

  Shorefarm, Yellowfield, Draya Calyrex

  "Do you know any walking songs?" Viridian asked.

  "No," Lazur said.

  "Should I?" Carnel asked.

  They were walking along a well-trodden road leading up and away from the shore-side village. The road was beaten dirt with cobbles running down its centre. It was clear that at some point, this had been a well-maintained and well-built road, but decades without any noticeable maintenance had turned it into a pair of wagon-ruts and a space where mud and puddles collected.

  Still, the route was cleared of trees, and there was a small ditch running alongside one side that was collecting most of the runoff.

  The road wound up and around the hillsides past the village, then onwards towards the town of Shorefarm. They weren't quite heading that way, however. As they came upon a fork in the road, the three paused, and Lazur eyed their map for a moment before pointing to the rightward of the two paths. "That way," she said.

  So they went that way.

  The road led up a hill, and from there they had a decent view of Shorefarm. The town spread out some ways, surrounded by a low wall and several dozen large fields that were currently little more than shallow trenches cut across the ground. Smoke was pouring out of a few chimneys, and from afar, the town looked almost at peace.

  Viridian wondered if they'd find the same kind of horror in Shorefarm proper as they'd fought in its attached fishing village.

  As they continued, they came upon a site buried in the lee of two hills. A graveyard.

  It was an old space. Ancient trees encroached upon a space where hundreds of small tombstones were lined up in neat rows. In the centre of the graveyard were more elaborate tombs. Statues of draconic figures, their hands reaching together in prayer over mounds of earth covered in iron bands.

  The dead walked between the rows.

  Emaciated, skeletal figures were shuffling through the graveyard, their gaits slow and clumsy, and their backs stooped. A few still had meat on their bones.

  "Do we go around?" Viridian asked as she watched.

  "We can," Lazur said.

  "Free essence," Carnel said. "They don't seem fast."

  "Can we get essence from the dead?" Viridian asked. "What will we stick our needles into?"

  That stumped her more violent friend. In any case, the wizard's tower they were aiming to visit was just visible in the distance, across a few hills and past the graveyard. No matter what they did, they'd need to go through the yard, or around it.

  It was getting dark, Viridian noted idly. She reached to her waist and flicked on the magical light that Tomas the blacksmith had given her. It illuminated a patch of orange ahead of her. "Let's go around," she said. "If the dead disturb us, then we fight them."

  They started down the hill towards the graveyard. There was a tall wrought-iron gate at the entrance, and next to that a small house just on the outside of the graveyard itself.

  Viridian moved close to the gate out of curiosity. It was open, but the dead within didn't seem like they were all that interested in walking out. "What are the dead doing?" she asked.

  "Verily, 'tis a matter most dependent upon the nature of the dead ye speak of."

  Viridian and her two companions spun.

  There was a man sitting on a rock near the entrance of the graveyard. He was tall, but hunched over, wearing an oil-slicked long black coat that covered most of him, and a stovetop sort of hat, with a flat top and a tall crown.

  "Most do naught but wander, as wraiths adrift upon the waning tide of dusk. The hour draweth nigh when the world's breath is faintest, its living hum near stilled. Few among the dead hold aught of mind or will--their limbs move as if bound by echoes of purpose long faded. Grant them spade or plough, and mayhap they would till the earth as they did in life, though I reckon their furrows would be twisted as the paths of those lost to time."

  "Who are you?" Lazur asked.

  Carnel next to her, silently slid her short sword out of its sheath.

  The man raised gloved hands in surrender, and as he tipped his head back to better see them, Viridian realized that his head was a fleshless skull, the bones covered in thin, careful engravings. "Aye, merely a wayfarer who finds solace 'mongst the slumbering quiet of graves. No grim purpose, nor ill intent," he said, though his mouth never moved.

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  "You're dead," Viridian said.

  "Thou art not so bound to life thyself," he pointed out rather politely. "Yet I shall not mark it against thee. Indeed, were thy form one of warmer breath and quickened pulse, mayhap I would ne'er have graced this place at all. But as thou art... aye, thou hast stirred my curiosity, much as I suspect I have roused thine in equal measure."

  "Who are you?" Viridian asked.

  "I am no one of note, nor one whose name need linger upon thy lips! But tell me, o soul of an innocent maid clad in the guise of a puppet, what stirs within thee as thine metal eyes fall upon yonder unslumbering dead? Doth pity take root, or mere passing wonder? Perchance something more...?"

  Viridian glanced back to the dead. They were... rather pitiful. "I suppose. Some pity. But why are they still moving if they're dead?"

  "Ah, but there lies the trick of it. Their souls have long since fled--what remains is but the lingering magic that grants them shape. No mind, no will, naught to pity. And yet, thy kindness is noted. Ordinarily, a gravekeeper would see them laid to rest, that their essence might return to the earth that once bore them. But, as fate would have it, the gravekeeper too has joined the dead this day."

  Viridian turned back to the strange man. She nodded. "Thank you, then," she said. "For watching over them when no one else would. It's kind of you. My name is Viridian."

  "And as I have said, I am naught but a nameless watcher, a fleeting shadow upon the world's edge. Yet, for thy kindness, I offer thanks, Viridian. 'Tis been an age since last I was graced with such words. And so, I shall grant thee a boon. Speak thy desire, and I shall listen."

  Viridian stared, then turned to her sibling puppets. This was certainly a strange person to meet... "Ask for magic," Lazur suggested.

  "Ask for weapons," Carnel replied.

  Viridian considered both, then turned back to the strange maybe-undead. She eyed him up and down, but her gaze lingered on his hat. "Your hat fits you well," she said. "Where can I get one like it?"

  The skeletal man paused, then guffawed. "My hat, thou sayest? Ah, but this hat was woven for none but me." He reached up, and pulled his hat off. A flick, and it was up and sitting atop Viridian's head.

  The metal-sewn cap she'd been wearing fell off, and she found herself reaching up to the stovetop hat on her head.

  "See how it perches just so, whereupon thy wood-pale brow it sits askew, ill-fitted to thy narrow visage," Viridian said. She reached to her throat, but her own voice continued. "Nay, what thou request is a hat shaped to thy own form, one that whispers of thee and thee alone."

  The hat returned to perch upon the bald head of the undead man. "And so, let my boon be thus: with all sincerity, I wish that, in time most fair, thou and thy wooden sisters shall each find a hat befitting thy pretty heads, as all things should be." He chuckled. "How amusing! But lo, the night doth wane, and the toils of wizards stretch ever onward. Away with thee now, little puppets, to thy master's call and craft. As for me, I shall linger yet upon the veil, a watcher betwixt worlds. We shall meet again, of that I have no doubt—and mayhap, when next we cross paths, thy heads shall be adorned in finery most fitting!"

  Viridian scooped up the cap she'd dropped and soon she and the others found themselves scurrying along past the graveyard. Soon, she paused and stopped and realized that she'd gone around the bend of a hill, out of sight of the graveyard already.

  "That was strange," she said.

  "That was unnerving," Lazur said. "Why did we move so quickly?"

  "I wanted to fight him," Carnel said.

  "I suspect he might have come out the better in any fight," Lazur said. "That... thing, was dangerous. We're going to have to warn Magus Maldrak of it."

  "Do we have to?" Viridian asked.

  "Yes," Lazur said. "To let him know you wasted the favour of something weird on hats."

  Viridian wished she could emote sometimes, because she felt like there was an expression for how she felt at the moment, but perhaps not any specific word for it.

  ***