The Curse of Deepwood

"Ho, who goes there?” The challenge rang out in the predawn darkness. It was a morning shadowed with a mist which slunk along the ground. The watchman had thought he’d heard voices down there among the swirling tendrils of vapour, but as there was no answer, and he could see nothing. He shrugged and continued pacing along the western parapet of Hold Ironwood.

Hold Ironwood was named after the trees which made up the bulk of Deepwood, the dense forest crouching less than a quarter league beyond the western gates. Much of the woodwork of the castle and keep was wrought from the flesh of the metal-like trees. Their trunks were so dark they were nearly black, and the wood itself rivalled ebony in colour. The leaves were dark green and broad like the elm, but with jagged edges like the maple and twice as large as a man’s hand. It took three men the better part of a day with sharp-edged steel axes to chop and strip a small Ironwood tree. Nobody touched the large ones.

The forest of Deepwood had existed beyond mortal memory and Hold Ironwood had been around almost as long. What was more, there had always been a king bearing the Ironwood name to possess it, and the idea of anyone else presiding over the hold had never crossed the minds of either its inhabitants of any of the villagers and provincials who enjoyed the protection of its forbidding walls and noble reputation.

The watchman who now paced the western walls had been born within the town of Ironwood, his ancestors stretching back beyond all reckoning. He was the youngest son of a sheep farmer and from his earliest years had dreamed of being able to add his name to the roster of the Ironwood guard. Now that the dream was reality, he dreamed of other things, usually, except for this morning where, gazing at the shadowy mist below, painted an eerie white by the last beams of the setting moon, he wondered about everything and anything he’d ever done in his life.

He shivered involuntarily as he looked up and out to the hulking forest of Deepwood, which was now only a looming mass of blackness in the dark gray light. He hadn’t slept at all that night. He’d gone out early to take over his watch. Something was stirring that night...he could feel it in his unnaturally fluttering stomach, and high-strung nerves and it had nothing to do with the birth of the Queen’s first child announced in the late afternoon of the preceding day.

To all accounts the boy and the queen were healthy, the king was ecstatic and there was nothing unusual or untoward about any of it. What concerned the youthful watchman now had begun around sunset the previous day and hadn’t abated even to make room for the natural weariness that ought to have put him to sleep almost immediately.

“Ho, there! Roran, is that you?”

The young man jumped and quickly stood at attention, “Yes sir!”

The older man growled a laugh and patted him on the shoulder, “Moran preserve you, lad, you needn’t do that to me, I’m a senior in age, not rank.” He bent over with a grunt and propped his elbows against the parapet, gazing across the shadowy plain. “The saints are too close right now.” He said, off-handed, as Roran began to relax, “I couldn’t sleep for the awefulness of it.”

Roran peered in the same direction, as though hoping to catch a glimpse of the heavenly beings, “What do you mean, sir?”

The older man gave him a sideways glance, “Ah, you felt it too.” He said, after a moment, “Born in Ironwood, were you?”

Roran nodded, understanding and not at the same time.

“Heh, so am I, so is most of the guard. You might have noticed that hardly anyone in the barracks slept last night.”

Roran had noticed, vaguely, but not really. He’d been too caught up in his own thoughts and discomfort to register the fact that Trinian in the bed across from him had kept rolling over, something he never did in his sleep, or that Rhen in the bunk above him, normally a soundless sleeper, sighed about once every hour, nor that Crell had gotten up to use the latrine twice. Now he wondered how he could have missed it. These were all men he’d grown up with. In sharp contrast, was Danell, the guard he’d taken the watch from, who had grown up in a province faraway from the hold and from Deepwood. He’d been yawning at his post and profuse in his gratitude towards Roran for coming up early.

“Are you saying that the restlessness which has kept us all from sleep is the Saints’ doing?”

“Such a thing has never crossed their minds, lad. The Saints have no quarrel with the worms of Ironwood.”

“Yet—”

“Yet,” the older man ploughed forward, “they have descended to bring someone trouble, and we, alas, are the inheritors, not by will, simply by proximity.”

Roran opened his mouth to ask another useless question and then wisely shut it, waiting for the older man to explain himself.

“The Saints’ power cannot be hidden. They are, as I said, too close tonight. Some dreadful thing is afoot, and we cannot help but feel their presence, those of us who are of the earth and air, and water of Ironwood, built by the hands of the Saint Moran, may he bless us.” This seemed the end of it, and Roran ventured to speak, “You know it’s only a fairy tale about Saint Moran, may he bless us, building this place. I don’t see why someone as mighty as he would take all the trouble to build a place he couldn’t inhabit.”

“You’re a fool, lad,” the other snorted, “A clever fool, but a fool, nonetheless. Think you that the Saints alone are exempt from any desire to create, to build? Think you they stopped at creating men and beasts and raising the land of Demantha from the waters? The Saints can never stop creating or they cease to be who they are, they deny their very nature, and who can know why or for what purpose are the things they build, only that they all have a purpose; even Ironhold.”

As the sun began to cast its fresh light over the edge of the eastern horizon and lightened the black light into a fuzzy gray, Roran thought he began to understand a bit of what the old fellow was going on about, but the conversation was quickly cut off by the arrival of the king’s huntsman at the gate, long bow and arrows across his back, a crumpled leather hood pulled over his ears. “Ho! Carn, is that you I see?” He hurled his voice up the black wall.

“The same.” The older man shouted, “Had you also a night with little rest?”

“I did indeed.” replied the huntsman cheerily, “Yet it matters not to me for I have been charged with the killing of a fallow deer for a household feast tonight in honor of the little prince. The early morning will favor my hunt.”

“So may it be.” Carn responded, “Moran speed you, Tolle!”

Tolle saluted and hopped nimbly through the wicket, trudging off into the graying mist.

Roran studied the thick mist as it twined around the tops of the huntsman’s creased boots. “Is it not strange how the mist creeps so near the earth?′ He asked finally, as Tolle became lost to view in the predawn shadows. “I wot I’d yet to see a fog like this before.”

Carn nodded, “An you believed me when I said it was the Saints’ doing you’d not think it strange.”

Roran smirked, yet, all the same, he wondered if Carn did speak truly. He wondered more when the morning waned and the castle hummed with life, yet the cheerful grin and ruddy face of Tolle was not seen, nor his sturdy figure marching back, hauling a fat buck through the dew-drenched weeds. He had left just before dawn and the wood was rife with deer not to mention he was a very skilled hunter, tracker, and marksman. Tolle ought to have been back no later than mid-morning even on a bad day but now, as the sun sank past the meridian, Roran could only recall Carn’s words: The Saints are too close. Had Tolle entered the shades of Deepwood prematurely? Was he even now suffering the effects of the Saints’ proximity?

As the afternoon progressed even the mild-tempered cook was ruffled. How was he to serve a feast when the centerpiece, the fresh game, was conspicuously absent? As he sliced leeks and crushed garlic, the cook prepared a few tangy statements to pronounce in the tardy huntsman’s hearing upon his return.

It was four hours past mid-day when the cook threw up his hands and declared that if Tolle did not return with game within the hour there would be no feast that night. This statement was heard by the head-servitor who reported it to the steward, who reported it to the first minister, who reported it to the king. The king, who never lost his temper, lost his temper and ordered two of his guards out to find the ‘no-good son of a donkey-eared hat merchant,’ and to bring back a deer, with or without him, within the hour.

Roran watched them go with a lump of mis-giving building in the back of his throat. Even in the heat of his anger, the king had chosen wisely. Both men were well skilled in the hunting arts, but Tolle was better. If he had come to mischief, how much more would these two?

Carn growled when he heard about it. “I knew I should have warned him.” He said, just loudly enough that Roran could hear him, “I hoped he had enough sense of his own for all that.” Roran felt like an idiot for asking what the man meant. He guessed he ought to know, but he didn’t and he wanted details. He shouldn’t have bothered. Carn snorted, told him to use his wits if he had any, and refused to say anything else. Roran was too young and thoughtless to notice that the old guard was seriously worried.

When the hour was long past, and not so much as a hare had emerged from the lengthening shadows of the forest, the king was forced to consider the fact that on the eve of his son’s birth, when all the restlessness began, something had indeed gone terribly wrong in the shades of Deepwood. Confused and distressed, his majesty postponed the feast indefinitely, and the entire castle dined on salt pork and ale while the king considered. Might it simply be two coincidences gone wrong in a single day, or was something more sinister occurring? He decided to test the waters by sleeping on it, and sending a quartet of trackers into the forest the next day. Surely with four men to watch all points of the compass, surely with a new sun rising, surely with some time between the bizarre disappearances, the situation would resolve itself.

With this reassurance to quell his unease, the monarch of Ironhold left the council chamber to go make silly faces at the newborn infant in his gilded bassinet, and to crack jokes with his anxious wife, assuring her that all was well.

Carn muttered ominously as the four trackers, bold and irreverent, set out for Deepwood the next morning. He, alone, was not horrified when the day ended and they had not returned. Now everyone knew what he had known since that first eerie morning, something had gone terribly wrong in the shades of Deepwood, some great evil had come to rest there.

The king was possessed by several shades of emotion. What would his rivals think if they learned that he was living next door to a cursed forest? What if the curse spread to Ironhold? If only he had even the beginning of an explanation as to why any of this was happening! How dare something so blasé as a forest cause him, a monarch, so much trouble?

Of all the problems he had expected to encounter as a king, this was not one of them.

His counselors were divided; some insisted he should chop the forest down one tree at a time, others believed that he should leave it alone for the next seven years at least and wait for the evil to dissipate, still others said that some great sin must have been committed by someone in Ironhold and must be avenged in order for what was obviously a punishment of the Saints to be lifted.

As they argued, the king impulsively rose to his feet and thumped the table with his fist for silence. The startled nobles clamped their jaws and looked to him expectantly. “To chop down a forest full of ironwood trees would be an impossible and wasteful task, to sit passively and wait is a thing that goads me to the pit of my stomach but I will do it if necessary, and I will not start a pointless witchhunt among my own people for a crime that may never have been committed.” He paused for a moment but continued to glare at the counsel in case any of them thought that his pause was an invitation to speak.

“I will do this. A contingent of sturdy soldiers, trackers, and woodsmen will enter the forest tomorrow. If even one of them returns we will continue to pursue the matter. If….” he ground his teeth at the indignity of what he was about to say. The King of Ironhold was a proud man, “If none of them returns, no one is to enter the shades of Deepwood for the foreseeable future without my express permission. No, we will not discuss it, I am the king still, even if it is only to reign over a cursed forest.” He spat out the words and turned to go, “My lord chamberlain, make the necessary arrangements if you please.” Head bowed he exited the room, and left the counsel members to gossip as they would.

The watchman Carn could have predicted the result to his majesty before he wasted more good men, but the king would not deign to take counsel from an old watchman, and so when two days passed with not one of the vanished contingent making an appearance, the king swore into his beard and grimly signed the edict as he had promised.

Thus it was that eight years passed while not a soul dared to venture into the mysterious and cursed fastnesses of the old forest.