It was well into the night. The royal dining hall filled with the smiling faces of lieges and lords as they ate and drank from their long red wine glasses. They spoke in haughty voices seated along six table rows, from the blood-red double doors to the large fire behind the podium. Above them, on the second floor looking down, the occupied chairs of counts and barons leered; Next to them, burning candlelight hung from riveted stone columns. Across the black granite tiling, orange reflections of the diamond chandelier twinkled beneath elegant motion. Darkly clothed servants passed with their cloths and service trays like waning shadows at the first breath of dawn.
There were so many in that place that Orpheus could barely see, in the sea of heads and black gowns, the moving hands and faces of his father and sister. In the faint ringing of his hearing, the clamour and chatter made his head spin. The pale cups of his eyelids were dotted with the sleepless markings of deep black circles.
He watched Kezaiah stand against the wall by the door and she left her plate and the glass of wine untouched. Taking his wine glass by the stem between his fingers he brought it to his lips and jerked his head back; there was a single gulp before he set it down again. The barbarian said nothing as he continued. He had taken to drinking in those long hours before the chattering ceased and, as he turned to digest the silence, he could see his sister at the podium lifting her glass to speak.
A silence swept through the hall.
“As a child, His Grace, the Grand Duke of Daeson, my father, often spoke to me on the values that have upheld the Blackwell family for generations. He spoke of those who have made sacrifices, he spoke of danger and caution, he spoke of what our forefathers were forced to compromise,” Clio paused, taking a glance at each of the weary eyes of those before her. “But from his wisdom, I have learnt of one, single, uncompromising value - the very core of this dynasty he has helped to forge: Loyalty.”
Orpheus turned his face from her and to an idle maid. Even the smallest speck of amusement was absent from his face, as he pointed down at his glass for her to fill it. He caught a glimpse of Kezaiah, her eyes rolling as Clio spoke.
“Loyalty is why we have gathered, sharing bread and wine and exchanging our pleasantries. Loyalty is what has kept not only the Blackwells, or the Dagons, but each one of our families alive to speak of it today. On that note, I should like to take the opportunity,” she said as she perused the faces that looked upon her, searching carefully until they’d reached a head of red hair, “To invite my dear elder brother, Orpheus, to join me as we each raise a glass to one another.”
They all set down their glasses and he could see out across the entire court the turning heads and the court of eyes that watched him, as if they could hear the churning of his thoughts in the sound of his breath; as if they could understand by the shifting of his eyes what it was in this world that made men afraid.
He took his wine glass by the bowl and began down the middle aisle. They followed him with their eyes like beasts to an open flame and, when he reached the podium, his sister pressed her glass to his own. She observed him with a furtive glance, but he turned his eyes from her. The candlelight made his head spin.
“Now then,” she began with a glass half-raised in the air, “To loyalty.”
The audience mimicked her words with each of them turning face to one another. It was at the height of this toast that Clio’s clasp on the glass loosened, letting the wine slip from her hands to smash against the podium base. Wine ran red across the floor to match the innocent blush upon her cheeks.
“Oops,” she whispered from the side of a guilty grin, before speaking up and turning to Orpheus. “My apologies dear brother, would you mind making sure my slipper is free of glass?”
He avoided her black gaze against the light. The large fireplace moaned as logs splintered in the flame. He could see his red hair and pale face in his reflection beneath him and he clenched his teeth. Lowering himself to a kneel, his bare fingers wrapped around the slipper at her foot, hovering above the glass. But, at this moment, Clio pressed her heel into his hands and watched the fragments tear into his knuckles.
Blood dripped from his hands and onto the black granite floor like a drizzling rain and he trembled as the banquet was reduced to a blur. When he looked into the darkness of her eyes, the haze seeped deeper across his vision, drowning his mind with the images he had seen in his nightmares. The sole brazier and the burning flame; the fingers along the pale womb; the petrified corpses; the mumblings of the priests and their sanctuary pillars; the forested place.
But there was more than that: a way forward. A path forked from grass and flower, delving into the twisted graspings of the Murmur Yews. His father walked this path with a baby between his arms deeper into the reaches of the Southern grove, beyond man’s knowing.
As he stumbled to his feet and turned, he snatched a cleaning cloth from a servant when he passed them and crossed into the vermillion hall. The candlelight of the banquet faded behind him like the dying smoulders of a great fire.
“It seems my dear brother has some urgent business to attend, do excuse him,” Clio spoke out, clicking her tongue at the neighbouring servants to clean the mess. Her attention discreetly moved along the edges of the banquet hall to the barbarian woman. She seemed minutely unsettled but made no move to follow Orpheus out.
—
There was a gasp for air as Orpheus pulled his face from the running water. The cold cleared much of the haze that had fallen over him, dampening the mumbles and whispers that lingered in his mind.
Bloodied knuckles leaked crimson down the white stone. Slowly it seeped into the ripples and dyed much of the fountain red, leaving the stained white cloth to bounce and sink beneath the fall.
As he grasped the fountain's edge, long and desperate breaths heaved in and out from his chest; they fought desperately to calm him, but sickness had sunk deep into his stomach.
“I cannot understand. I don’t understand. What’s it saying? What the fuck is it saying?!” He belted out into the muddled reflection on the water’s surface. “What is happening?”
He recalled the path that forked as he looked down at his bloodied knuckles, the wounds having been clumsily enlarged from his panic to remove the fragmented shards. The river of blood pooled for a moment as he tightened his grip; frustrated, confused.
“To hell with it all,” he uttered with a sharp scowl, turning his head toward the Southwest and the Grove that lay within it.
Onward he carried himself with heavy steps, scuffing his boots against the plated path and losing his footing every so often until he'd arrived amidst muted green.
A quiet moon shone down upon the lands, quietly observing the nonsense that rattled Orpheus’ mind. He heard the crashing tide closer than it was; the crackling of branches, caressing the back of his neck; and the wailing wind, calling him deeper into the Murmur Yews.
The path led on as he arrived at the fork, watching as the Murmur Yews gradually wove together. Great hands of bark intertwined and clasped at once as if they were ritualists, calling him forth into their lair. Half-mindedly pursuing the images that haunted him, he obliged.
Each step brought their fibrous fingers closer and closer. They drew close enough that he was forced to walk the path’s centre, or succumb to relentless scratching and prodding from the branches.
Somehow, through the canopy, the moon continued to peer through, though even with its light he could see his own two feet no longer as he hobbled within a low growing mist. Only the curving of the path by the patterned formations of the vines passing between the mosses guided him forward.
It seemed to him that he had walked for hours down the path. When he turned at last to understand the progress he had made, he realised he stood just before the entrance to the fork. However, it differed. The Murmur Yews embedded themselves in the jutting stone of what looked like a derelict gate slowly crumbling.
He twisted quickly to see his surroundings had warped. He stood amidst the ruins of stone pillars and the scattered rubble of columns and rusted visors; just through the wall of vines that grew on the deteriorated constructions, he could see the glimmer of open sea afar. In front of him, a flight of wide stairs lead up. Chunks of stone, here and there, were rough cavities that offered no foothold. The flashing of experiences he had never known were set before him. It was as though he witnessed the beginnings and the endings of history through a fragmented breath that was not his own.
As he approached the stairs the fracture of the faded object beneath his soles sent him to a stagger. When he saw the broken femur below him he fell at his back and grasped the corners of a stone arrangement beside himself. Orpheus scrambled for footing and turned for breath. The resting of a charred corpse, reclined half-in ash and dust, gazed upon him with crossed arms above its chest and the darkness in the skull sockets that, while it seemed to watch him, was unseeing.
Orpheus screamed.
His nerves seared the sweat that darkened his clothes from his chest to his palms. He stumbled up the stairs in a mad sprint and fell through the weak structure just over them, descending into a dark void that swallowed his voice. He screamed and reached for the fading moonlight that left him as he fell, and fell.
