The Dearth

An Archewood Story

Note, this story takes place after “Travel By Star,” and references significant characters and events in that novel.

Raddik, son of MacEwan, second heir of the Arborland, loved the high mountain road that marked the eastern border of his people’s territory. It ran along a sharp ridge that caught the sunrise often in scattered fog, washing the tree trunks in a glimmering pale gold, growing warmer and stronger as the fog burned away. The smell of cinammon and caramel would awaken in the bark then, and he would find himself torn between two impulses. The first, to make camp and linger for days. The second, to lengthen his stride and double his time back into the valley. Both desires touched the same place. Home.

But the fog had not given way this morning. The sun, for all her fight, could only blear the light indistinctly. A dozen Caelan woodsmen stood not far behind, halted at the rising of Raddik’s hand. They were tired, yet still in that manner that rewards the heart, speaking of hard work and well-earned rest. They had been hiking for eight days, checking the boundaries of this blessed place, which had been given to their people back when the first men were still entering the world. For five hundred years the Arborland had been hidden from that same world, waiting for something. Last Autumn that something had come. The Traveler and the Star had come.

Raddik would have gladly smiled at the memory of all that happened then – of wolves defeated, of an evil stopped cold in its tracks, of a renewed brotherhood with the people of Archewood – if it weren’t for the ruin before him now. A large, high cairn of heavy stones, dry fitted with such care that it could not easily be torn apart had been placed here, standing as a welcome to friends and a warning to those who were not, marking the road’s turning for home. The cairn had been the work of men and angels. Enemies could not cross it, either becoming blind and deluded in their direction or ominously set upon by tremors that shook them within so badly they could only flee. It had stood for ages. The fierce storm that had destroyed Archewood long ago had left it untouched; even the convulsions of earth that had raised the borderlands thereafter had not disturbed a single stone.

Yet, today they were thrown down. Everywhere. Broken and blackened. And all round, there were tracks of oily soot, smelling of decay, wilting the Spring grass wherever it grew near. A forbidden fire had been burned here. Raddik need not be a seer of hidden spheres to know that something terrible and unworldly had been done. Upon the remaining foundation stones of the cairn, blood had been poured. And among the tracks of men were the prints of a creature that walked upright, but was no man. Stories of old filled his mind. Stories of his own father’s near death. Stories of a pit and the things that found their way out of it.

Raddik gave a quick wave.

One of his men, Dormin, approached, his breath hitching upon seeing the bloody stones. The rest of the men fell in.

“Could this have been the work of that dreaded wolf?” Dormin asked. “Or the wanderer who broke the Restful Gate?” The young woodsman’s voice told Raddik even he knew these were false hopes.

Raddik, however did not answer immediately. It was true, the drift beast had been a vile and destructive force in their land, and he had drawn many wolves to his pack, but they had been mostly confined to the north. As for the wanderer, the one they called the Wathe, he may have been powerful enough to do this. But he had been a man alone. The destruction before them now? It had clearly been the work of many who, for reasons Raddik could not explain, were no longer afraid. He shook his head.

“We both know who did this,” he said.

A murmur spread through the group.

“Why would they return?” Dormin asked. “With all that has happened, why choose now?”

“Why not?” Raddik replied. “Darkness always fights hardest when its time draws nigh. My father will need to know.” He spoke the last quietly, more to himself than anyone else. Seeing the look on Dormin’s face, he raised his voice to address the entire group. Raddik did not possess the moutainous strength of his brother, Arrik, nor quite the richness of his father’s voice, but he had learned well the bearing of a Laian, and his cohort would never shrink back from their orders. “Thains, what you see is only the beginning. I want every stone here turned to gravel and scattered to the east. Those covered in blood must be ground to powder and thrown in the nearest brook. We will leave this place as clean as we can. You have one hour, then we hasten for Harmony without rest.”

“What does it mean, my Lord?” one of the men asked. There was no fear in his voice, but neither was there experience. The lad, for that is lately what he had been, had lost his father a year ago in the battle at the Ledge, and upon turning 19, petitioned to join Raddik’s scouting party. His name was Laersh, and though more than six decades separated him from his captain, to the outside world they might appear as cousins only separated by a handful of summers.

Raddik traced again the prints of foulness, trampling their way off the road and down into the coarsely dressed valley on the opposite side of the Arborland. His eyes sought for a sign of smoke, or any hint of more numbers gathering. But the Eastern slopes were far too twisted and overgrown, and his instincts told him this had only been a warning. A warning and a ritual. More than a desecration, something terrible had been wrought here. Something had been called up. Something that should not walk among these mountains. Something only the most broken of men would seek to harness.

“It means,” Raddik began, then stopped. There were words that had gone unspoken in his homeland for centuries. Darknesses believed to have been buried and banished. He hesitated to give them any life, but he knew to not say it would only make the rumor all the worse. “It means the Dearth have returned.”

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