Crow Heart

Memories were tricky things. Like the mice he befriended, memories would scatter if neglected, fleeing into darkness, or fading and dying. Brogan needed them, though, so he guarded them jealously. His mind’s eye never wandered far from them.

Brogan, that was one of them. That was the name they had given him. ’My Brogan Beag.’ He could hear the fondness in his mother’s words as he replayed them in his mind.

They had loved him. He remembered that, too. They had given him the same name as his father. That was proof.

They had cried when they left him.

His mother’s face was an agony of grief.

Brogan winced; in truth, it was easier to remember her grief than her face.

His fingers clutched at the pendant that they had given him, even as his mind clutched at their memory. He guarded it as jealously as the memories. It was the only possession he owned and the only physical link back to them, other than his scrawny flesh and awkward bones.

Sometimes he wondered if they had forgotten him, if that grief had passed as all things did. But deep inside, he knew they hadn’t. He had to know it. If he let himself believe they had, there would be nothing left to live for. Would they remember his face? His heart fluttered with the doubt.

He was growing and changing, but the pendant remained the same, so they would recognise it even if they didn’t recognise him. He tucked it carefully back out of sight.

Down here, there was no one to love or care for him. No one who thought he was worthy of a name. No one who cared for anything at all, as far as Brogan could tell.

Loving and caring for his mice was one of Brogan’s tiny acts of defiance.

Brogan knew he was different, and he was glad. But difference drew notice. It was his fondness for the wide sky that had landed him in trouble today.

A summons to see Banrigh Daeomen, Witchlord of Fothalmar, chief city of the Harrowlings of Foth’tir, the realm beneath the mountains, was enough to set Brogan’s bowels trembling. Stumbling along behind the witchlord’s huge disciple who had been sent to summon him, Brogan had to turn his mind from his memories and his mice just to keep his legs moving in the right direction. It was a battle of wills, his against theirs. They were desperate to turn and flee.

Brogan lived in a warren of tunnels near the surface, damp, cramped, and musty, a place for small scurrying things.

The tunnels down here were different. They were tall and clean-edged, all straight lines and sharp corners, lit by the eerie gleam of Aethyreal lamps.

He could walk with his back straight here, though it ached to do so. He felt exposed, as if he were a rabbit wandering into a fox’s den.

Brogan suppressed a squeal as they emerged into a vast cavern. A lake stretched across the floor, glowing with the unmistakable iridescence of Aethyrea. Around it, hewn from the walls of the cavern, were the tiered dwellings and walkways of a city. A city he had heard of but never seen.

’Fothalamar,’ he gasped, awed.

The disciple gave him a disinterested glance.

Looking up to meet his gaze, Brogan noticed the twinkling darkness above. Taking it for a moment to be the night sky, he stopped and stared, prompting an impatient grunt from his escort.

‘The narrow sky,’ the disciple said, impatience roughening his tone. ‘Good enough for the rest of us. But not for you, sky-dreamer. That’s why he’s sent for you.’

The stars in the narrow sky, Brogan realised, were crystalline rocks reflecting the glow of the Aethyrea.

Carved into the rock high above the lake, Daeomen’s hall was as jaw-dropping as the Frothalmar cavern itself. Its rear wall was formed of a natural cavern, hung with sparkling stalactites, and the room was lavishly decorated with all the wealth of the underground kingdom. Gold and rubies. Silver and sapphires. All were used with such bountiful abandon that they might have been no more precious than river pebbles or raw wood.

At the centre of the cavern, an ancient stalactite and stalagmite had fused, forming a single massive pillar. At its base, a great seat had been carved. The witchlord’s throne.

As for Daeoman himself, Brogan knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to forget the image of the witchlord. But something told him that the memory would never fade, no matter how much he tried to push it from his mind.

Daeomen rose as Brogan approached, towering above him. As tall, perhaps even taller, than the parents whose memory he treasured, the witchlord’s height was intimidating enough, but it wasn’t his most distinctive feature.

His skin was translucent. So thin that Brogan could see dark blood pulsing through his veins, and darker, more repugnant things coiling sluggishly through his innards. But it was the unnatural luminance of the witchlord’s flesh that etched his image indelibly in Brogan’s mind. His glow was almost as strong as the Aethyreal lamps.

’Ah, Disciple Korran, you have brought me the sky-dreamer,’ the witchlord said.

His voice was a surprise; softer, more lilting than Brogan expected. Serving only to make it more terrifying. At the sound of it, Brogan dared to look up. Lidless eyes like giant, milky-white eggs stared out at him, each with a tiny black pupil trained intently on him.

‘Welcome, sky-dreamer. Come. Sit with me,’ Daeoman said.

Korran stepped back, eyeing Brogan with suspicion. Brogan fought to keep his legs from buckling. For a long moment, they refused him, and when he finally managed to stagger toward the proffered stone bench, it was from blind terror rather than obedience.

He tried to be elsewhere. Tried to block out the sights, the smells, the fear. But he knew he couldn’t ignore the words. Failing here, he guessed, would bring a swift end. As swift as the end of his first mouse when he rolled onto it in his sleep. There were lots of words too. Strange words that he struggled to make sense of.

‘I was once a sky-dreamer too,’ Daeoman began, his voice like the rustle of bat droppings underfoot, soft but unclean.

‘Before all of this, the press of the stone, the whispering echoes, I lived beneath the wide sky. I would lie in the grass and watch the cornflower heavens deepen into indigo night, each star kindling like a shy witness to the deeds of the dark hours.’ The witchlord’s voice took on a wistful tone of recollection, but his tiny black pupils stayed unnervingly fixed on Brogan, and his blank expression never changed.

’When darkness was full, I would find an empty patch of sky between the brightest stars and focus. Slowly, new stars would reveal themselves; too shy for the eyes of all but the most inquisitive.

’It taught me to understand perspective; that brightness is not truth but distance. That even the dimmest stars could outshine our sun if only we stood nearer.

‘I saw that people, too, are like stars. Each one shining with the light of life. Some burning close, bright and fierce. Others hidden in distant, shadowy places, sheltering their light jealously, like a candle in a storm.’

Daeoman shifted in his seat. Brogan hoped this meant he was coming to the purpose of his speech. The words were starting to have a strange effect. They were like scattered mice, and catching them was an effort.

‘You have been a distant star, Sky-dreamer,’ Daeoman said, using the title like a name.

Despite his discomfort, it was a name that Brogan liked.

‘Dim, perhaps, but not unnoticed. I need your light, now. I need you to go beneath the wide sky.’ Daemon paused.

Brogan shuddered, the witchlord’s next words binding him like spider silk.

‘A stream flows from our lake,’ Daeoman continued. ’Tainted with Aethyrea, it winds through the mountain to emerge, we assume, somewhere beneath the wide sky. I have dreamed of a people who live beside that stream. A people whose light burns very bright indeed.

‘I need you to find them.’

So here I am, he thought. Wherever here is. Brogan had felt his way through the narrow tunnel for what felt like days, though days weren’t a good measure of time in the sunless depths of Foth’tir. Sometimes crouching, his hands like a snail’s feelers, sightless and searching. Sometimes crawling, his head barely above water. And once, entirely submerged, squirming through a gap like an eel. Fighting the scraping, clawing blackness and gasping for breath as he emerged.

The stream weaved left and right but always downwards, as streams are wont to do. At times, it would plunge precipitously in a rush of angry water. Falling with it, he would squeeze his eyes and hope for a deep pool to soften his landing.

The water didn’t glow enough to illuminate the tunnel, but the taint of Aethyrea that Daeoman spoke of was obvious. There was something invigorating about it. Beyond refreshing, as any cold, fresh stream would be. The water was enlivening and energising, so that, difficult as it was, the journey did not tire him but seemed instead to make him stronger.

As he dragged in lungfuls after his last swim, Brogan tasted something different in the air. Gone was the musty, stale air of Foth’tir. The air here was clean. Brogan had been beneath the wide sky often enough to know what that meant.

The stream emerged into a familiar cave. A cave he recognised. Not far from the tunnels Brogan called home, the cave was one of a handful of entrances, or exits as Brogan thought of them. At least his return journey, should he choose to make it, would be easier.

The waft of clean air was stronger here, and he felt its familiar pull. He scrabbled forward, keen to feel the warming light of the sun. When he emerged, though, the anticipated sunlight was absent. It was nighttime.

Looking up, he could see a vast starscape beyond the branches of trees. Instinct made him pause and look for an empty patch of sky. Sure enough, as he stared, more tiny pin-prick stars revealed themselves. Dusk. He couldn’t help smiling.

He had a new name now, Sky-dreamer. One that was given to him by the witchlord. One that the witchlord claimed he once shared. While he still felt like he belonged to the name Brogan, he also felt a tiny seed of hope. Hope that he might one day belong to the Harrowlings. That he might have a purpose.

As he took in his surroundings, Brogan stared long and hard at the mountains that loomed beyond the crevice he had just emerged from. Without thinking, his fingers found the pendant. He knew, though he wasn’t sure how, that was where his parents lived. His legs ached to take him there. To find them. To be loved again.

He should never have looked back.

With a dull pain in his chest, he turned again to his mission, to Daeoman’s will. If he proved himself, there might be other chances. Ways to find his past, without risking everything.

Though it was night, the forest blazed in monochrome to Brogan’s eyes, after the cloying dark of the tunnel. Lit not only by the starlight but by the near full moon that peered sightlessly down on him like a great blind eye. Not unlike one of Daeoman’s eyes, the thought sent a shudder through Brogan. He recalled that Daeoman had claimed to have seen bright people who lived by the stream without ever leaving Fothalmar. That the moon might be the eye of Daeoman’s dreams was all too easy to believe.

The forest was so vividly alive after the dead rot of the caves that Brogan’s senses were overwhelmed. He inhaled the scents of the forest, a heady bouquet: flowers, trees, fungi and the rich leafy loam in which they grew.

The sound was immense, too. For ears accustomed to the eerie, disorienting echoes of Foth’tir, this was a vibrant orchestra of life: rustling leaves, scurrying footsteps, trickling water, the calls and cries of animals and birds.

His first steps were tentative. He stopped frequently to sniff the air and listen, not for signs of danger but to admire the scent and sounds of freedom. He clung close to the stream as he went, like a spider to a silken thread. Unable to shake the sense that the witchlord was watching, losing the stream was unthinkable.

The forest grew denser as he continued, the undergrowth thicker, so that wading in the stream was often the only way to progress. He dreaded the stream forking or joining with another and kept glancing back, trying to fix the image of his route in his mind.

It shouldn’t have surprised him when he saw that the sky behind the mountains was beginning to glow with the coming dawn, but the realisation set his pulse racing, and he told his feet to go faster.

The stream dropped steeply ahead, its rush roaring in Brogan’s ears. He scurried onto a rock at the top of the incline to look for a safe route down.

He followed the route of the cascading stream to a pool in a broad dell at the bottom of the slope. As his eyes fell on the pool, his breath died in his throat, and his heart hammered against his ribs.

He had found them.

The bright people, for bright they were, were bathing in the pool.

He stared, fascinated by their long limbs and lithe forms until his breath returned and, with it, the instinct to hide.

Peering from beyond his rock, he watched as the people emerged from the pool. Their laughter and melodic voices reached him. His head swam with the strange emotions that they carried. Forgotten feelings of happiness and love. They awoke in him a dangerous new urge. Longing.

Dried and dressed, the figures melted into the trees until the pool echoed only with the memory of them. Brogan emerged from behind his rock and crept forward.

Beams of sunlight burst through the gaps in the mountain peaks, setting the morning sky on fire as he covered the last few yards to the pool. He inhaled deeply, almost tasting the bright people in the air. The ache of his longing tightened his throat. He perched on a rock at the edge of the pool and stared down.

A face stared back.

Brogan gasped.

He hadn’t seen his reflection in a long time. The pale face that stared back at him was wide-eyed and innocent, framed in wavy curtains of dark hair. He felt a tear win free to run a cool track down his cheek. How could he ever dream of belonging to the Harrowlings if he looked like that?

‘You look like you have seen your own ghost.’

Though it was the gentlest voice Brogan had ever heard, he was caught so unawares that he nearly fell headlong into the stream. Gathering himself, but shaking with fear, he raised his eyes to the other side of the pool where the voice had come from.

Looking back at him were a pair of wide green eyes. Their regard was as gentle as the voice. The girl, for that is what he took her to be, was older than Brogan. Her wet hair was pulled back from her face and was the colour of dark blood. She smiled with warm encouragement.

Brogan stared back, his limbs rigid, frozen with shock and fear.

’I am Meegan,’ the girl said. ‘Who are you?’

Her words served to thaw him. He caught a frown of disappointment in those green eyes as he turned to flee.

His return was a frantic blur.

He didn’t want to tell Daeoman about the people. Especially about Meegan. But if there was one thing that life in Foth’tir had taught Brogan, it was that what he wanted had never mattered. Only what he must do to survive.

The risen sun soaked the life of the forest in a dizzying myriad of colour. Deep blue and white flowers carpeted the forest floor. He danced through them, careful not to crush their delicate forms beneath his racing feet, as he drank in their sweet aroma.

It felt wrong. He shouldn’t be fleeing this; he should be embracing it. He remembered Meegan’s kind eyes and wondered again and again what would have happened if he had answered her. He was still a child, and he had the vague sense that she would have seen that and tried to help him. She might have rescued him. She might have helped him find his parents. The idea flattened his earlier notion that he might finally belong to the Harrowlings like a scythe.

What he truly wanted was not to belong, but to escape.

To live beneath the wide sky.

To be rescued by the bright people.

To be free.

But bound in the web of Daeoman’s words, he was trapped. And his feet had no choice but to scurry along the silken thread of the stream back to the witchlord’s lair.

He plunged into the darkness of the tunnel at the stream’s source, resolving to do Daeoman’s bidding this time. To win his favour and his trust so that he would get a better opportunity to escape.

Tears pricked at his eyes as the memory returned; the one he never let himself look at too long. The Harrowlings hadn’t taken him. His parents had left him to the Harrowlings. Perhaps there was no place for him with them. Perhaps they couldn’t love him.

Perhaps they didn’t.

He felt fresh and strong as he emerged at the glowing lake, its surface reflecting the shimmering Aethyreal lights of Fothalmar. There was the answer; the power of the Aethyrea. That was what had sustained and healed him as he had made his tortuous way out of Foth’tir following the stream. That same power ran through the flesh and limbs of the witchlord. He suppressed a shudder as he made his way to Daeoman’s cavern.

‘Take this to them. They will know what it is. Ask for nothing in return but promise them more at every dark moon.’ Daeoman’s voice was little more than a resonant murmur, but Disciple Korran, the huge Harrowling who had led Brogan to meet the witchlord, hung on each word as if it had the weight of a mountain.

Korran nodded and bowed, taking the small phial from the witchlord and tucking it with careful reverence into a pocket of his rough cloak. He turned to his assembled entourage, a crowd of Harrowlings all senior to Brogan in both age and rank, that shrank the witchlord’s cavern with their number.

Brogan had described the route in great detail, hoping that it would mean he didn’t have to accompany them, but Daeoman had been insistent.

‘Sky-dreamer, this is your reward. We Harrowlings have spent too long skulking in the darkness. You are my new disciple. You will show us the way back into the light.’

This time, it was Brogan who felt the weight of the witchlord’s words and the flutter in his chest of blossoming pride.

As they assembled in the outer chamber, Korran’s eyes fell on him. They smouldered like coals, burning with contempt and what Brogan took for jealousy.

’Sky-dreamer. Your newfound favour with the witchlord stands you in no better stead with me. You are not worthy to wash the feet of the least of my men. If you are coming with us, stay out of my way. And know this: every one of us begrudges you Daeoman’s favour.’ Korran’s words were delivered with the rhythm and weight of hammer blows, crushing Brogan back into insignificance.

Brogan tagged on at the back of the great Harrowling horde as they issued from the cave into broad daylight. In the dark, they had marched in unison to the steady thud of Disciple Korran’s drum. But in the light, their steps faltered. They scattered down the road into the forest like blind rats. Even the drumbeat stumbled.

Brogan blinked against the sun. At the back, unguarded, he felt that old ache; the wide sky calling him home.

He thought about his parents. He thought about Meegan.

No one was watching him.

He thought about escape.

You are my new disciple.

The witchlord’s words echoed in his mind. This time, though, they had a different resonance. Instead of filling him with pride, they filled him with the suffocating feeling of a spider’s silk parcelled prey. They were a trap.

Then he heard it. A voice behind him. A woman’s cry.

Mother?

He stopped. Turned. His eyes searched the rockfall around the cave mouth.

When they found the source of the noise, his mouth fell open, and his spirits surged.