Deathsworn (Wattys 2018 Winner)

3 - Fara Mordova

Bard was filled with the worst kind of cold. Not the sort that blows down from the mountains and puts knives into a man's fingertips when the snows fall. No. That cold can be reasoned with, its bite lessened by pelt or fur, its harshness tempered by a fire of equivalent ferocity. Bard was cold in his bones. He was cold in his stomach and his throat, cold with more than his senses could understand.

There were few places or feelings in Bard's memory when he could recall treating with such despair, such utter wrong. The night five winters ago, when he had been first accused, for sure, and perhaps once or twice in the early days of being Deathsworn. Back when the party was he, Taaj and Tall Toyne alone. The Shrouded Isles in the Island Kingdoms had given him a similar shudder, as had those caves at the Steeps of Maladrom. If it was despair and utter wrong that a man wanted on his plate, though, there was no better kitchen than Fara Mordova.

Fara Mordova. Where the walls were red and twisted, the stonework binded by more than labour to look permanently angry. Where the wails of the Burned Priests could be heard as they admonished themselves for grievances only they could perceive. Where the land was green for one league across, the blackness of the brimwood trees bordering it, enclosing it in a sumptuous garden of false promises.

They'd ridden for a day from Endholm, Bard trying to lift their spirits by singing songs such as The Knights of Eight and The Islander and the Horse. The merriment had turned to melancholy now, the songs to ash and bone.

Bard wiped sweat from his brow and flicked it onto the courtyard floor. Elders, how do they survive the heat here? Of the Gallowmen, only Taaj was unperturbed by the power from the Burned Priests' fires. Bard had never been to Zaffaar or the Spice Ports but it was said if a man held his hand from the shadows in the afternoon, he could serve his children roasted meat for their dinner. For the rest of the party, however, Fara Mordova was a furnace. And yet I am frozen inside, how odd.

'How long does this take again?' Weasel's facade of composure was close to cracking, Bard could tell. The boy had the nails of one hand in his mouth and was staring at the highest windows of the Tower of Weeps. He'd only seen the Burned Priests a couple of times, had Weasel.

'Once waited a day and a night,' Tall Toyne said from where he'd lain his massive frame on a stone bench.

'We did not. I haven't ever been in this courtyard more than seven hours,' Taaj said. He was pacing the place, winding in and out of the columns over by the windows that looked in to the Hall of Penance. You couldn't see through those windows, not a peep, but Taaj tried every time all the same. 'Bodkin, when was the last time you were here for a day and a night?'

'Don't remember,' Bodkin answered, absently. His gaze went upward to the red parapets that protected the walls and ran around the courtyard. Gargoyles kept their roost every few merlons, all of them turned inwards towards the courtyard itself. If they had eyes, Bard suspected they would be filled with condemnation. They didn't have eyes, though, because they didn't have faces. To put a face on a stone creation was to birth an idol. The Burned Priests didn't tolerate idols. They spent their lives atoning to the Elders, Farazun in particular, and the Elders had no known faces. In a way it made the gargoyles more dreadful than those Bard had seen at Halvard and Giants Fort.

'He won't be long, Weasel,' Bard said, staring up at the Tower of Weeps himself. Nightmares never wait long.

'I wouldn't care if he wasn't so bastard ugly.' Taaj swung around the last column and passed by the heavy oaken door to the tower.

'Taaj,' Bard said, fixing him with a look to give him pause. Spoken insults couldn't bode well in Fara Mordova. The very air had ears and a mouth with which to pass on secrets.